One of the great difficulties in my role as critic of free trade and its damage to the United States is to counter the indifference and misunderstanding of the media when it comes to dealing with the question of tariffs. Already, the subject tends to stupefy the ordinary citizen, so it is not in the interest of a newspaper or television editor to devote the time necessary to analyze the sometimes obscure details of trade relations between nations. Talking about a hike in the Chinese export tax rate on a platter is an almost certain way to lower ratings, as well as to destroy morale.
Nevertheless, it is worth paying attention to the consequences and political contradictions of the exchange. Last month when I read the front page headline Wall Street Journal announcing a continuation of anti-China tariffs between the Trump and Biden governments, I almost fell backwards. According to anti-Trump forces, Democrats as well as mainstream Republicans, wasn’t it one of the former president’s worst mistakes to have imposed heavy taxes on half of Chinese products? Wasn’t it the media and Biden’s Democratic Party that screamed the most against the alleged stupidity of ultranationalist advisers to a crude president? “The American carnage stops right here and stops immediately,” Trump said in his fierce inauguration speech, widely ridiculed by his opponents. It was understood that he was speaking, in part, of the destruction of the American industrial base and of the factories abandoned across the country because of a bipartisan policy of “free trade”; Trump was known to owe his victory to “rust belt” voters, especially in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
But here is Biden, adherent to the free trade consensus, which applies an essentially Trumpist policy. Amazing, isn’t it? True, her Trade Representative Katherine Tai, like Trump, has urged U.S. companies to seek tariff exemptions – currently up to a maximum of 25% on Chinese-sourced imports – if they run out of alternatives. cost effective by purchasing spare parts or parts made in China. In any case, Mme Tai is now the spokesperson for the Trump line. Greg Ip, from Wall Street Journal, explains that this “fatalistic” view reflects “the popular school of thought in the Trump administration and among some in the Biden circle: commitment [avec la Chine] has always been doomed because China has never believed in the global order supported by the United States and other market-oriented democracies ”. Now the tribune of the fatalists is called Rush Doshi, member of the National Security Council and author of The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order. Title less raw, but not really different in its conclusions than Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action, the bellicose work of Peter Navarro, economist and close advisor to President Trump. Not long ago, Navarro was regarded as a marginal figure, even mad, by the right-thinking classical liberalism, who usually denounce anything that is protectionist.
How to explain this sudden reversal of free trade fervor in Washington? On the one hand, it is due to the end of Clinton’s reign in the Democratic Party, which collapsed with the defeat of Hillary. It was President Bill Clinton who, in 2000, had promulgated the “normal” and “permanent” trade agreement with China – an agreement which allowed the entry of the Communist colossus into the WTO and which triggered a avalanche of investments and relocations from America to the Pearl River Delta. That Beijing is disingenuous in its respect for the free market has never been a mystery or off-putting to American capitalists. What caught Clinton’s interest was precisely the enthusiasm of his big Wall Street donors and the majority of domestic manufacturers, all targeting cheap labor and tightly controlled by an authoritarian government and intolerant of strikes. and dissension. We knew exactly what we were getting with the Chinese agreement in 2000: a new concentration of low-cost factories, far from unionized premises in the great Midwest. A true miracle of “free trade” and Bill Clinton’s art of selling. That China constantly repeals WTO regulations (concerning subsidies, intellectual property, technology transfers, etc.) does not interest the barons of liberalism. The Chinese worker earns on average $ 5.29 an hour in “non-private” industry ($ 3.30 in “private urban unit”); its American counterpart earns $ 30.30.
On the other hand – and more embarrassing for Democrats – is the fact that Trump and his Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were decisively right on steel tariffs. As proof, I do not quote Peter Navarro, but rather the New York Times, Trump’s enemy ark and staunch promoter of liberal doctrines. On May 21, the “leading newspaper” featured a dramatic comeback of the steel industry in the United States: “Prices, demand and hiring soaring: steel is back”. The digital caption made it clear, “A rebounding economy and Trump-era tariffs helped push domestic steel prices to an all-time high. “
What if the Trump nightmare happens again in 2024? Are we going to say that he was wrong about tariffs?
John R. MacArthur is editor of Harper’s Magazine. His column returns at the beginning of each month.