Trump ready to hit China
$60B in tariffs to be imposed on 100 products
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is preparing to impose a package of $60 billion in annual tariffs against Chinese products, following through on a longtime threat that he says will punish China for intellectual property theft and create more American jobs.
The tariff package, which Trump plans to unveil by Friday, was confirmed by four senior administration officials.
Senior aides had presented Trump with a $30 billion tariff package that would apply to a range of products, but Trump directed them to roughly double the scope of the new trade levies. The package could be applied to more than 100 products, which Trump argues were developed by using trade secrets the Chinese stole from U.S. companies or forced them to hand over in exchange for access to its massive market.
The situation remains fluid, and Trump has previously in his presidency backed off economic threats at the last minute. But he has shown a recent willingness to unilaterally impose tariffs — even amid objections from advisers who fear starting a global trade war and economists who warn such actions could ultimately hurt American businesses.
Trump was particularly determined to follow through on tariffs on China, as criticism of U.S.China relations was at the center of his presidential campaign, according to the administration officials who demanded anonymity to discuss the president’s plans.
If implemented, the tar-
iff package would be the broadest set of punitive economic actions imposed by a modern U.S. president against China and could draw retaliation, fraying the trade partnership between two of the world’s largest economies.
Most U.S. businesses agree with the Trump administration’s criticisms of China. But many disagree with the administration’s strategy.
“The U.S.-China Business Council believes that tariffs will do more harm than good in bringing about an improvement in intellectual property protection for American companies in China,” said John Frisbie, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, a nonpartisan group of 200 American companies that do business with China. Frisbie’s group opposes the tariffs. “Business wants to see solutions to the issues, not just sanctions.”
In 2017, China was the largest U.S. trading partner in goods (not counting services), edging out Canada and then Mexico. The United States exported $130.4 billion of goods to China, but it imported nearly four times as much, running a trade deficit of $375.2 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Economists specializing in China said that it would be difficult for the Trump administration to target Chinese companies because products imported from China are made by multinational companies with supply chains that stretch across the globe.
Chinese manufacturers might assemble these products or put on the finishing touches, but the country does not export as many products to the U.S. that are entirely made in China, said Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“So much of what we import from China is produced by multinational companies,” Lardy said. “Thirty percent are consumer electronics. I’m sure the president doesn’t want to raise the prices of those and send Apple’s stock into the toilet.”
It will be easier for China to hit back, Lardy said, as China can zero in on U.S. exports such as soybeans, which are entirely made in America. Soybeans are one of the top two goods the United States exports to China, along with aircraft and aircraft parts, according to government data.
Lardy also said that penalizing China was unlikely to help U.S. producers, even if the tariffs succeeded in stemming the flow of goods from China.
“In the best case they might reduce imports from China by $30 billion, but it will have virtually no effect on U.S. global trade deficit,” he said. “We’ll just start buying things from the next lowest cost supplier, such as Bangladesh or Vietnam. It’s not that the $30 billion will magically be produced in the United States the day after they announce these tariffs.”
China is also the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. It holds $1.17 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities, down about $33.5 billion since August last year. The U.S. government faces huge borrowing needs, not only to finance new deficits but also to refinance past securities now coming due, so a drop in China’s appetite for that debt could nudge interest rates up in the U.S. But experts also note that China would not want to hurt the value of the huge amount of securities it still holds, leaving the two nations’ finances in a state of mutual semi-dependency.
Beyond the escalating tensions with China, Trump’s pivot to protectionism has put much of the world on edge. His 2016 campaign was built around promises to put “America First” on every issue, but some aides managed to scale back his plans for trade restrictions in 2017 as the GOP muscled tax cuts through Congress.
That has changed this year, however, with the tax bill signed into law and some of the people who had warned against protectionism exiting the White House.
Trump earlier this month ordered tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, a move U.S. allies and trading partners met with protests and threats of retaliatory tariffs. Gary Cohn, the top White House economic adviser, opposed the tariffs and announced his resignation.
Republican leaders in Congress criticized the metal tariffs, but are not planning legislation to overturn them. The party is also worried Trump will withdraw the U.S. from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact the administration officials are currently renegotiating with their counterparts in Mexico and Canada.