https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/13/us-china-trade-deal/
“It just doesn’t get any better than this," President Donald Trump proclaimedin January 2020 as he signed a partial trade deal with China. Mr. Trump heralded the pact as “historic” and “momentous.” He touted his dealmaking abilities for getting China to commit to purchase an extra $200 billion of U.S. products in the next two years.
The results are in: China didn’t buy anything extra from the United States.
The purchases of U.S. exports that China did make in the past two years barely got back to the amount China was purchasing in 2017 — before Mr. Trump started his trade war, according to calculations by Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. exporters will never get back the sales they lost, and few have seen any meaningful growth in their sales to China under the “deal.” “The only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure,” saidMr. Bown.
The main result of Mr. Trump’s bluster on trade was higher costs to the American public. Numerous studies have shown how tariffs were mostly passed along to American consumers, causing prices to rise on thousands of popular everyday items. It was a debacle that was easy to predict. Business leaders, economists and former trade officials from both parties warned the Trump White House repeatedly that the nation would have been better off without the trade war and the tenuous agreement that was ultimately reached with China (and not adhered to).
The smarter move would have been to keep the United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the big trade deal with other nations in the Pacific, including Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, Australia and Chile. The whole purpose of the TPP was to boost trade among other nations and lessen reliance on China, which was excluded from the deal. But Mr. Trump pulled out of the TPPin his first week in office, and other nations went ahead and completed the trade pact on their own. In an ironic twist, China is now petitioning to join.
It’s true that the pandemic didn’t help. The destruction of business travel, tourism and students studying abroad helped fuel a big decline in U.S. services exports to China. Some of the few U.S. industries to see exports to China rise significantly in the past two years were covid-19-related products, semiconductors, liquefied natural gas, corn, wheat, pork and sorghum. In the meantime, U.S. purchases on Chinese goods jumped last year as Americans spent heavily on home remodeling and home entertainment. Overall, 2021 was a record for the U.S. trade deficit, though that is largely a reflection of the strong economic rebound.
The United States has just learned costly lessons about the futility of trade wars and how China can’t be trusted to honor its deals. Now the Biden administration has to figure out how to hold Beijing to account for failing to fulfill its commitments. One conclusion ought to be clear: More tariffs are not the answer.
---------Thanks joj,
In authentic science, when we want to test the affect of 1 variable on the outcome of something that has numerous variables affecting the outcome............we change only that 1 variable and leave the other ones constant.
In the real world laboratory of trading with China we had Trumps tariffs which imposed a massive change in 1 key variable that was great enough to evoke an affect/response that should have been easy to observe.
But then we had an historic pandemic, which also could resulted in a big affect/response.
I'm absolutely NOT defending the tariff.
Just saying that the author of the article is not practicing objective science.
And it's interesting that the Biden administration has decided to keep the Trump tariffs in place(and they have a penchant for reversing as many Trump politicies as quickly as possible) but 95% of the criticism over the tariffs is being directed at Trump............but not Biden for continuing the exact same tariffs.
Biden got back into the Climate Accord his first day in office.
It's been a year and he's not doing the same thing with the TPP? Why not?
I realize that it's much more complicated and there are several different factors but the discussion about damage from tariffs is still blaming Trump for damage in 2022 for tariffs that have been imposed by Biden the past year, with no plans to change.
This author is basically giving Biden a free pass and others too, if its such a no brainer damage causing situation are not hammering Biden with even a fraction of the blame.
By Katie Lobosco, CNN
Updated 5:14 PM ET, Wed January 26, 2022
This is an interesting dynamic............and there is so much more that complicates the situation that I can't keep track of to even have a definitive opinion but in general, favor free trade but am not sure to what extent the word "free trade" means in today's world if one country is using unfair tactics, like China has done.
Mike,
You make many good points. The pandemic was an outlier for sure.
You ask why hasn't Biden gotten back into the TPP?
I would suggest that he is deferring to the progressive wing of the party. I recall Hillary Clinton having to back down from her declaration "The TPP is the gold standard of trade deals." She saw the polling was against it among the party faithful when running against Bernie Sanders. I was in favor of that trade agreement, which I believe would have been advantageous for America and is a conservative position.
Why was Trump against it? Because it was an Obama accomplishment.
Why was Trump against the Paris accords? Because Obama was for it. Why did Biden get back in? Because the party faithful were in favor.
Thanks joj!
I know that you've stated many things that you think that Trump did purely for the sake of undoing Obama accomplishments and pj insisted on the same thing.
You mentioned this as the reason for why Trump pulled out of the Climate Accord too.
Because Obama was for it, you think.
I couldn't disagree with you more strongly on that one joj.
Every single energy policy that defined Trump compelled him to get out of the Climate Accord ASAP.
He was gung ho on not just US energy independence for the US but was the biggest fossil fuel cheer leading president and world leader that I know of.
The Climate Accord is totally ANTI fossil fuels.
Him pulling out of the Climate Accord was as consistent with his energy agenda as the Pope going to Catholic Church on Sunday.
Trump has proven to be very vindictive, ESPECIALLY when somebody does something that interferes with or stops an effort/campaign of his......after he's commenced his effort.
When that happens, they become a target for him and he holds grudges forever it seems.
I don't know of any history between him and Obama related to the TPP but it seems that some people that don't appreciate Trumps positive objectives, when he is sincere and they make sense(Climate Accord).......instead of trying to understand them and risking their heads exploding .......its just easier to assume that Trump did it to undo something good by somebody else.
For sure Biden got back in because of the politics that were dictated to him entirely. If Bernie was president, we could say it was something close to Bernie's heart but still political.
Trump got out of the Climate Accord for totally NON political reasons.
The Climate Accord has very little to do with authentic science. It's almost all about politics.
Something greening up the planet, the building block for all of life(and still only half the optimal level for most life) and causing what was defined at every other time in geological history as a climate OPTIMUM.........can't be destroying the planet and causing a climate crisis.
No matter who insists it and how many people convinced that its a climate crisis, the authentic climate science, biology and all of science says totally otherwise.
For me, this would be as clear as the fact that Biden won the election..............and I personally counted all the votes myself.
We actually are destroying the planet in many ways but the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been a massive gift to most life on the planet.
Death by GREENING!
11 responses |
Started by metmike - May 11, 2021, 2:31 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/
The real environmental crisis's/insects dying-dead zones-aquifers drying up-plastics in the ocean-landfills/trash-over consumption of natural resources(metmike is a PRACTICING environmentalist): April 2019
Mike,
Perhaps you are correct on the climate accords. Trump is legitimately pro business (at least in his own mind). So I'll concede that point.
But let me make the point more generally. If Trump saw a path to the White House in the Democratic lane he would have been pro choice, as he was most of his life, until he saw a path to the WH in the Republican Party.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/trump-in-1999-i-am-very-pro-choice-480297539914
Then you have Trump leading the birther mob claiming the bogus charge that Obama was born in a foreign country. (Big lies from Trump preceeded THE big lie). I believe this was a racist tactic. Obama had to show his papers (he finally did) just as slaves away from a plantation had to show their papers to prove they were not runaways when on the master's errand. How humiliating.
So Obama returns the humiliation at the correspondents dinner roasting Trump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHckZCxdRkA
You think Trump's fragile ego didn't relish payback?
We've departed far afield of the TR stuff.
I was commenting only on the Climate Accord joj because that's the only one that I know most of the facts/science about and qualify as knowledgeable enough to make confident statements.
Thanks for the reminder that we are in deep into NTR land, joj!