Trump Trade Policies Should Focus on China; Trump’s Strategy Is Wrong
LA Times, 21 March 2018, Trump ups the ante by $60 billion in his doomed trade war with China
Extract: President Trump was just warming up when he ordered global tariffs on steel, aluminum, solar panels and washing machines in recent weeks. The main event came Thursday, when the president announced plans to impose up to $60 billion in tariffs on China. This time, the president is focused on the right problems: China’s abuse of U.S. companies that do business there, its pursuit of technology developed here, and its support for hackers who steal trade secrets online.
For Trump, China has long represented the worst of the worst among trade cheats. The tariffs announced in previous weeks applied to metals and products from a vast array of countries, but their primary target was Chinese exporters that allegedly sell their goods below cost in defiance of global trade agreements.
Trump’s latest initiative focuses not on Chinese products, but on Chinese behavior — its cavalier attitude toward intellectual property rights and the hostile environment it has created for U.S. companies seeking to operate or invest in China. And on these points, there is widespread agreement that China has not only behaved badly, it has resisted years of pressure from U.S. leaders to change.
Among other things, China continues to require U.S. businesses to create joint ventures with Chinese firms in order to invest in selected industries, and in the process they often are forced to transfer valuable and novel technology to their Chinese partners. China also puts its thumb on the scales in negotiations between U.S. and Chinese firms, helping Chinese companies obtain U.S. technology on favorable terms.
The right steps to take are the ones that Trump has disdained since the day he took office. The industry groups and countries that have succeeded in changing China’s trade practices have been the ones that have acted in broad coalitions.
Governments around the globe have complained about Chinese violations; the Trump administration should be organizing trading blocs to jointly demand changes from the Chinese through globally recognized institutions like the WTO that exist for just that purpose, backed up with tariffs and other sanctions if they don’t deliver.
Instead, the administration has gone in the exact opposite direction, bullying trade partners, threatening to cancel major free-trade deals and undermining the WTO. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-china-tariffs-20180323-story.html
CNBC, 22 March 2018, China responds to Trump tariffs with proposed list of 128 US products to target
Extract: China’s commerce ministry proposed a list of 128 U.S. products as potential retaliation targets, according to a statement on its websiteposted Friday morning.
The U.S. goods, which had an import value of $3 billion in 2017, include wine, fresh fruit, dried fruit and nuts, steel pipes, modified ethanol, and ginseng, the ministry said. Those products could see a 15 percent duty, while a 25 percent tariff could be imposed on U.S. pork and recycled aluminium goods, according to the statement.
The statement did not go into greater detail. U.S. agricultural products, particularly soybeans, have been flagged as the biggest area of potential retaliation by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
CNN, 23 March 2018, Trade war fears; Stocks drop; DC avoids shutdown
Extract: Investors are running scared after the United States and China fired the opening salvos of what could become a trade war. President Donald Trump has directed the US trade representative to level tariffs on over $50 billion worth of Chinese imports following an investigation into intellectual property theft. The United States also plans to impose new investment restrictions and take action against China at the World Trade Organization. For more, please see the hyperlink below:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/23/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html
Foreign Policy & Domestic Politics 