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We're officially on Insta! Did I throw on a blazer at 5 am for all you lovely people? You bet I did!
“Accusing Beijing of ‘reneging’ on commitments it made in earlier talks, the nation’s top trade negotiator said Monday that the Trump administration will increase tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods.” AP News
The left criticizes the tariffs for hurting US consumers, and worries about an escalating trade war.
“According to a paper published [in] March by economists Mary Amiti of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Stephen J. Redding of Princeton University and David Weinstein of Columbia University, practically all of the effect of the tariffs ‘fell on domestic consumers and importers up to now, with no impact so far on the prices received by foreign exporters’... the total cost of tariffs on importers and consumers was nearly $1.4 billion a month. In another survey, researchers at the Federal Bank of Atlanta, the University of Chicago and Stanford concluded that tariffs had led to nearly $33 billion worth of reduced investment in the U.S. in 2018 alone.”
Luke Barnes, ThinkProgress
“The real worry financial markets always have about tariffs… is not so much the tariffs themselves as what comes next. China could retaliate by cutting purchases of American agricultural goods, buying European airplanes rather than American airplanes, or trying to bias the domestic Chinese auto market against American brands. At that point, talks aimed at deescalation might get back under way. But the US could also counter-retaliate. This kind of ‘trade war’ between the world’s two largest economies could spiral out of control and end up severely damaging the global economy.…
“Trump’s aides tend to say that this is all overstated. That the basic reality is the US economy is in a strong position, that Chinese leaders’ own position is more tenuous, and that Trump is simply an aggressive negotiator playing for advantage. On the other hand, obtaining that advantage requires him to credibly act like someone who doesn’t understand — or doesn’t care about — the potential harms of a giant trade war. The problem is he’s sometimes much too convincing about it.”
Matthew Yglesias, Vox
Some note that “Trump can’t make any permanent trade agreements unless Congress agrees. That’s a long process he hasn’t even started. Instead, Trump is using executive authority, which lasts only as long as he is president. Any promise he makes to China will expire on January 20, 2021, just 21 months from now, unless he is reelected. The Chinese know this. That’s why they are in no hurry to make the kind of deals Trump wants. He might ‘encourage’ them with threats and maybe even higher tariffs. But then he risks crashing the markets. So, China’s best negotiating strategy is to wait, which they do very well.”
Patrick W. Watson, Forbes
Finally, many are criticizing the Trump administration for “[relenting] on imposing sanctions on key Chinese officials involved in carrying out human rights abuses in Xinjiang… in a bid to supposedly counter terrorism, Beijing has set up a vast system of ‘reeducation camps’ to dissuade the region’s predominantly Muslim Turkic minorities, including Uighurs, from embracing religious extremism. Advocates and Uighur exiles abroad point to a totalitarian dragnet that has disappeared a chunk of the region’s population and ushered in a draconian 21st-century surveillance state… [the failure to address this behavior is a] glaring absence in Trump’s showdown with China.”
Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post
The right is critical of China’s trade practices, and supportive of Trump’s tough negotiating tactics.
The right is critical of China’s trade practices, and supportive of Trump’s tough negotiating tactics.
“Beijing has too often violated the global trading rules it agreed to and profits from. It steals trade secrets and intellectual property and handicaps foreign companies with punitive regulation. Chinese abuses have undermined political support for free trade in the U.S… There’s no denying that [Trump’s] border taxes on Chinese goods have prodded Beijing to negotiate, though tariffs have also imposed costs on U.S. consumers and producers, especially in agriculture...
“Mr. Xi has to concede more than Mr. Trump does—without being embarrassed in the process. China already has largely free access to the U.S. market and rule of law. China’s main demand is that Mr. Trump lift his tariffs, which is reasonable if China agrees to cease its multiple trade violations. This includes protections for IP, a reduction in tariff rates toward U.S. levels, a reduction in subsidies for state-owned companies, more liberal rules for joint ventures, and an end to cyber theft.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“The president’s tough line now—heading into the final stretch of negotiations—will reduce friction later. China is less likely to cheat on any future agreement if it needs to comply to earn a reduction of these tariffs. China will cheat if the U.S. has no tariffs to enforce it… China has a long history of quickly breaking promises to the West. From refusing to abide by the rules of the World Trade Organization after it joined in 2001 to abandoning President Xi Jinping’s promise to President Obama not to militarize the South China Sea, Beijing’s record makes strong enforcement mechanisms a necessary precondition to any U.S. agreement to a deal.”
Michael Pillsbury, Wall Street Journal
Trump’s “policy is right on the mark here. Chinese President Xi Jinping intends to destroy the U.S.-led international system of fair commerce under the democratic rule of law. He aims to replace it with one of intellectual theft and feudal mercantilism. China is playing games in the trade negotiations to protect that agenda. But Trump's tariffs and other economic actions challenge Xi by jabbing at his unelected regime's economic vulnerability.”
Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner
“The trade war is, to a large extent, a conflict over the Chinese Communist Party’s most important means of keeping itself in power: subsidies and the state sector… significantly changing China’s trade practices would mean forcing the Chinese Communist Party to upend a core piece of what is holding its fragile political system together… [But] from the American perspective, the costs of living with these trade practices are far too high to justify perpetuating an unreformed trade relationship with China…
“If the United States is determined to no longer bear the painful consequences of China’s trade practices, it can either get Beijing to significantly reform its economy—extremely unlikely given the nature of Chinese politics today—or it can decide to curtail the trade relationship… sooner or later, American policymakers will have to face this reality and the uncomfortable implications of it.”
Nick Taber, The American Conservative
Artificial Intelligence creates never-ending death metal.
Science Focus
