Trade wars always hurt the country with the trade surplus. That is why China is trembling right now in anticipation of Trump. They are lobbying every media and junk think tank to propound “free trade” that is actually one-sided rather than free. They are subsidizing their producers via VAT credits and penalizing our producers by adding VAT taxes. That is on top of any duties and tariffs they have on specific goods.
China can avoid Trump’s resorting to tariffs by just leveling the playing field — stop issuing VAT credits on their exports and stop adding VAT and duties onto our goods, and stop manipulating their currency. If they are not going to do that, then tariffs are the only tool we have to compensate for the unfairness of those policies. Collecting those tariffs and using the revenue to offset the VAT on our exports would level the playing field and balance what China and the EU are doing to us.
Good points. We are NOT engaged in reciprocal free trade.
It is imperative to national security to have a robust manufacturing sector-the rapid conversion of our various industries during World War II helped to win that war.
Our enemies domestic and foreign have been successfully waging economic warfare against America, and using their profits to build up their military might.
I am always amazed when politicians pretend to be for workers and demand that minimum wage be raised to $15.00, and yet other countries have much cheaper wages. Then they want to save the planet, but are ok with letting China and others pollute the environment which keeps their cost of production lower than ours.
Reciprocal free trade with all the same rules is what is needed to have a level playing field, and we don’t have that with China for sure.