Bidenomics is making China angry. That’s OK.

Bridge collapse will strain US ports; let’s strengthen them

A persistent theme in Republican campaigning these past few years has been the effort to portray Democrats in general, and President Joe Biden in particular, as being soft on China — in contrast to Donald Trump’s supposed toughness.

One of the major planks in the GOP case against Biden’s China policies was that he was showing his softness by not banning TikTok. This looks ironic now, since Trump, who had favored a ban, suddenly reversed his position, reportedly around the same time that he had a sit-down with a billionaire who donates to Republican campaigns and has a large stake in the Chinese-controlled company.

Even before his TikTok flip-flop, however, the reality was that while Trump talked a xenophobic line that shaded into racism — for example, trying to relabel COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” — and imposed showy but ineffective tariffs, he never had a coherent strategy for confronting our biggest rival. Biden, on the other hand, has quietly taken a very tough line on trade, especially with China.

Biden’s sophisticated economic nationalism is a very big deal, much more so than Trump’s protectionist thrashing. In fact, Biden’s policies are so tough on China that, while I support them, they make me a bit nervous. But in case you don’t believe what I’m saying, let me point to someone who apparently agrees with me: the Chinese government.

China just filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about the Inflation Reduction Act, which, despite its name, is at its core an attempt to fight climate change by subsidizing the transition to a low-emission economy. Specifically, China complained about electric vehicle subsidies that it says unfairly discriminate against production using car battery components made in China.

America’s new industrial policy does favor domestic production and — we’ll see — might be in violation of WTO rules. But for China, of all countries, to complain about targeted subsidies is an act of colossal chutzpah.

China spends vast sums on subsidies for favored companies, far more so than any other major economy. And it has often engaged in blatantly discriminatory policy — for example, for several years, until 2019, non-Chinese comThe panies were essentially prevented from supplying electric vehicle batteries to Chinese car manufacturers.

It’s also unclear what China hopes to achieve with this complaint. In 2022, the WTO ruled that U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, imposed under Trump but retained under Biden, were illegitimate. The Biden administration responded by, in effect, telling the organization to take a hike.

The administration would surely do the same in defending subsidies that aren’t just Trump legacies, but rather a key element of its climate strategy — an attempt to make a transition to green energy politically feasible by linking that transition to job creation. The buyAmerican provisions may make this climate strategy more costly — but without them the IRA may never have become law.

So what is the Chinese government really doing here? I guess it’s possible that there’s some deeper strategy at play, although I have no idea what that might be. A more likely explanation is that Chinese officials are simply lashing out — perhaps in response to demands from the top that they do something — because they’re feeling the pressure from Biden’s policies.

These policies go far beyond electric vehicle subsidies. The U.S. is also promoting semiconductor production, in part to reduce dependence on China. And the Biden administration has imposed stiff limits on technology exports to China, with the clear goal of crimping Chinese technological progress in advanced semiconductors and computing. As I said, Biden’s China policy is so tough that it makes me, someone who generally favors a rules-based system, nervous, although unlike many economists, I do believe it’s the right approach.

It’s understandable that all of this seems to make China’s leaders angry. But that’s OK. It suggests that Biden’s approach is working.

And when it comes to domestic politics, note the contrast. Trump made a big show of taking on China, but he was ineffective when in office and appears to have folded on TikTok when donor money was at stake. Biden talks more softly but is wielding a really big stick. Or to put it another way, Trump isn’t actually a tough guy on China; he just plays one on TV. Biden is the real deal.

Naturally, this won’t stop Republicans from claiming that Biden is soft on China. But he isn’t. And by filing this complaint with the WTO, the Chinese government has demonstrated that it knows what’s really going on.

Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times.

immediate impact of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday was viscerally clear: In minutes, the Baltimore Harbor went from a humming logistics hub to a chaotic search and rescue operation. Two construction workers who had been fixing potholes on the bridge were pulled from the water, with more missing and presumed dead.

As a native of Maryland, I grew up driving through the Baltimore Beltway with my family to see the Orioles play at Camden Yards, which is near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Seeing container ships sail through the port was one of my earliest memories of global shipping.

Last year, the Port of Baltimore processed 1.1 million 20-foot containers worth of cargo, making it the ninth busiest port based on trade volume in the United States and the most important port serving our nation’s capital. It’s also the busiest U.S. port for car shipments, with more than 800,000 vehicles moving through its waters onto its docks and across its roads and railways in 2023.

As rescue workers and salvage crews work tirelessly to recover bodies and restore access to the harbor, our national supply chain is kicking into high gear to absorb the aftershock of the bridge collapse. Ship traffic to the Port of Baltimore is being rerouted to nearby ports, including one in Norfolk, Va., and the Port of New York and New Jersey. These changes come at a time when global supply chains are already stressed, with ships changing course to avoid Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and low-water restrictions limiting capacity through the Panama Canal. The looming contract expiration for the International Longshoremen’s Association in September also creates uncertainty for businesses that rely on cargo sent by sea.

As a result of all this, many companies that typically move goods through East Coast ports are already asking about rerouting their cargo through West Coast ports, opting to truck or rail the goods across the country to avoid delays. Ports around the country are preparing to absorb a surge in volumes as companies reroute around the Port of Baltimore and avoid the East Coast more generally.

If there’s one lesson we learned about the supply chain in recent years, it’s that sudden increases in container volumes arriving in U.S. ports can compound into congestion and delays. This was most evident during the peak of

Port modernization would lead to high-paying jobs in and around American ports, while making our infrastructure and economy more resilient to shocks like the one we’re experiencing today in Baltimore.

the pandemic-induced supply chain crisis, when over 100 ships were waiting off the coast to unload at U.S. ports.

We don’t yet know what caused the power loss that led to the crash in Baltimore or what could be done to avoid tragedies like this in the future. As we mourn the loss of life, what’s obvious to those of us in the shipping industry is that chronic underinvestment in America’s ports makes them ill-suited to handle the surging volumes they are likely to experience, as traffic planned for Baltimore is shifted to neighboring ports.

America’s ports are vital to American interests and are the backbone of our economy. Yet some of our largest ports can only handle vessels twothirds the size of the world’s largest and most efficient container ships, which today primarily sail on the Asia to Europe trade lane, avoiding the United States altogether.

While recent plans by the Biden administration to invest billions in new, U.S.-manufactured container cranes appear to be a step in the right direction, it remains to be seen whether we’ll actually be getting larger, more efficient cranes capable of servicing the biggest ships, or if we’re simply replacing the existing cranes with similar models while doing little to improve the throughput of our ports.

America’s supply chain infrastructure is central to our country’s prosperity. We should invest far more to dredge our ports and enable them to handle larger ships, build new rail connections, automate port operations and implement container dispatching software to increase the throughput of trucks loading and delivering containers. The failure to do so leaves us weaker and more vulnerable when catastrophe strikes.

The good news is that the technology already exists off-the-shelf and has been successfully implemented in ports around the world.

Port modernization would lead to high-paying jobs in and around American ports, while making our infrastructure and economy more resilient to shocks like the one we’re experiencing today in Baltimore.

Ryan Petersen is the chief executive of Flexport, a supply chain technology and logistics company. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.