Senate Republican: ‘Jury is still out’ on whether Trump is winning trade war

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) says the “jury’s still out” on whether President Trump is winning the trade war, particularly because the Trump administration has yet to strike a comprehensive trade deal with China.

“I think we’re in the early stages of the battle, to be honest with you,” Tillis told video journalist Nicholas Ballasy.

“You’ve got the big market, like the 800-pound gorilla of China, to settle down and you’ve got these other framework agreements,” he said, referring to the world’s second-largest economy.

“So, I think the jury’s still out.”

Tillis, who clashed with Trump over Medicaid spending cuts in the tax and spending megabill earlier this year, said the administration has made significant progress toward addressing the country’s trade imbalances by putting foreign partners “on notice” that uneven trade relationships need to be addressed.

“I believe that he has put on notice a lot of trading partners that have had an imbalance of trade with us, and I think that that’s good,” he said. “Still have to work through the tariffs and the downstream effects on businesses and consumers, but I think on the whole ‘putting people on notice’ has had a good effect.”

Tillis said a major goal of any trade deal with Beijing is to get Chinese companies to stop “ripping off our IP [intellectual property].”

Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month and Trump said this week he will ask the Chinese leader to resume soybean purchases from U.S. farmers.

U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods now stands at 55 percent, something U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said this week is a “good status quo,” even as the administration would like to increase trade with China in some goods and commodities.

The Trump administration and European Union leaders struck a trade deal earlier this year to set a 15-percent tariff rate on European imports to the United States.

The administration has also agreed to 15 percent tariff rates with Japan and South Korea.

The United States, however, has yet to reach trade deals with two of Asia’s biggest economies: China and India.

Trump increased tariffs on Canada, the U.S.’s largest trading partner, from 25 percent to 35 percent in August. But a substantial number of Canadian imports are exempted from that rate under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.

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