Trump's New Trade War With China Is Coming
With Donald Trump’s decisive victory in Tuesday’s presidential contest, the U.S.-China trade war is set to further escalate.
The ongoing trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies began in 2018 when Trump launched a series of tariffs targeting hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese goods, citing what he called unfair trade policies and intellectual property theft.
Trump, who has previously called himself the “Tariff Man” and described tariff as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” has threatened to impose 10 percent duties on all imports or higher and as much as 60 percent on Chinese goods specifically.
These additional measures could be implemented under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, which allows the U.S. to investigate and respond to foreign trade practices deemed unfair or damaging to U.S. interests.
President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6 in West Palm Beach, Florida. During his campaign, Trump said he would raise tariffs across the board, with duties on Chinese imports to be as high as 60 percent.
hip Somodevilla/Getty Images
When asked how Beijing might respond to Trump’s potential blanket tariffs, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters on Wednesday she would “not answer hypothetical questions,” but added, “there is no winner in a trade war, nor will the world benefit from it.”
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, previously told Newsweek that while she expects the president-elect to follow through on his campaign promise, “it remains to be seen whether they will be part of a broader coherent strategy aimed at winning the strategic competition with China.”
Wu Xinbo, executive dean of the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University, echoed this sentiment in a November 5 interview with Jiemian News, pointing out the impracticality for the U.S. to implement steep hikes across the board.
“Whether the tariffs on Chinese goods will reach 60 percent depends on the specific types of goods that the U.S. imports from China, and the taxes the U.S. may apply may not end up being so high,” he said.
Trump has promoted the tariffs as a means to reduce taxes and pay off the national debt.
However, a recent analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center projected that while Trump’s tariffs could bring in an estimated $3.7 trillion in gross tariff revenue, the actual increase in federal revenue would be closer to $2.8 trillion over the next decade, as the tariffs would likely reduce other tax receipts.
In addition, “Trump’s tariffs would significantly raise prices of imported goods since they’d mostly be passed on to consumers. That would shrink both inflation-adjusted domestic incomes and income tax revenues,” the study found.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration chose to retain Trump-era tariffs on approximately $300 billion in Chinese products, in what the Chinese embassy denounced as “unilateralism and protectionism.”
Tariffs on Chinese-made solar cells, semiconductors and medical supplies—such as masks and surgical gloves—were raised to 50 percent from the original 25 percent rate.
Duties on lithium-ion batteries jumped from 7.5 percent to 25 percent, and duties on Chinese electric vehicles, a sector where China holds dominance but little U.S. market share, were quadrupled from 25 percent to 100 percent.
Newsweek has reached out to the Chinese embassy in the U.S. for further comment.