Democrats Making China Trade War a Campaign Theme
The Democratic National Committee chairman, and progressive star Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., described President Donald Trump's trade war with China as a failed attempt at getting tough on China that hurt Pennsylvania exporters and manufacturers. “China smelled Trump's desperation and played him like a fiddle,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said on a video conference call with reporters June 24. “He lost the trade war that he started.”
Pennsylvania's Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills called Trump's tariffs “an erratic, reckless policy that continues to plague Pennsylvania businesses as we speak.” Perez and Patton Mills linked Trump's eagerness for a deal and his denial about the dangers of the novel coronavirus pandemic until it was too late. “We now know it didn’t have to be this bad,” Patton Mills said, adding that Trump's desire to claim a win with China on trade “contributed to our delayed pandemic response.”
The Democrats said that jobs were lost in Pennsylvania's lumber industry because of 25% retaliatory tariffs on hardwood lumber. (China lifted tariffs on U.S. oak, cherry and other lumber in February, presumably as part of the phase one purchase agreements.) They said that U.S. hardwood was 31% of the market in China in 2018, and dropped $615 million, to 18% of the market, the following year, after the tariffs.
When asked by International Trade Today if a President Joe Biden would roll back all the Section 301 tariffs to help manufacturers who import inputs and to help exporters hit by retaliatory tariffs, or whether he'd need trade concessions first, Warren replied, “If I can, I'd like to reframe that a little bit.”
She never said what he should do on the tariffs, but said, “It’s tough negotiating with China on trade, but that’s why we need an experienced leader like Joe Biden. Trump has proven he’s inept on this. There’s no central idea behind his trade negotiation beyond trying to plump up the image of Donald Trump.” Perez said that Trump hasn't put America first, instead, it's been America alone. He said Biden would mobilize the global community on China issues. He said, “This isn’t a president who’s going to need on-the-job training for this.”
Observers predicted during a June 23 webinar hosted by the National Press Foundation that although a President Joe Biden wouldn't talk as harshly about China, he wouldn't just roll back the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, either. Peterson Institute for International Economics scholar Mary Lovely said Biden isn't any softer than Trump on China. But she believes he may get further in convincing China to revamp some practices by rallying allies to the cause. “Trump, when he discusses China, seems to think we’re in a two-party world. We clearly are not,” she said.
Lovely said that China did not pay for the tariffs, either figuratively or in reality. While imports of items that were taxed fell 20% to 30% in the U.S., the Chinese share of world manufacturing exports “did not budge,” and, she said, the 65% of manufacturers that were hit with tariffs on their inputs saw net employment losses, from a combination of increased costs and retaliatory tariffs.
Huiyao “Henry” Wang, founder of the Center for China and Globalization, defended the phase one deal, saying agricultural purchases more than doubled in the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarter of 2019. He didn't predict how the U.S.-China relationship will go -- toward a partial decoupling around 5G, or largely unchanged, with tensions but extensive interdependency. But Wang said China would like to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he noted that it has better disciplines on state-owned enterprises than does the World Trade Organization.