Peace Piper
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Why Trump no longer talks about the trade deficit with China
President has shifted his language after failing to achieve a core 2016 campaign promise
Financial Times 10/2020
As Donald Trump gears up for the final stretch of the presidential race following the Republican convention, a glaring contrast with his 2016 campaign is his silence on the US trade deficit with China.
Mr Trump took aim at China during the convention over everything from its responsibility for coronavirus to its human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang. But as the November election grows closer, the president has become conspicuously quiet on trade.
During the 2016 campaign, Mr Trump pledged to get much tougher on trade with China, which he accused of “raping” the US. After launching a trade war with Beijing, he secured a limited trade deal in January. But that agreement looks wobbly and the trade deficit remains stubbornly high.
The US trade deficit in goods with China in 2016 was $347bn. For 2019, it was only marginally lower at $345bn.
Ryan Hass, a China expert at the Brookings Institution and an informal adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign, said that, during the 2016 campaign, Mr Trump pledged to negotiate better trade deals for US workers and asked voters to use the size of the deficit as a “scorecard”.
“The reason he doesn’t want to talk about trade [now] is he doesn’t want the media to do the forensics,” Mr Hass added. “Americans got their shit kicked out of them in the exact area where President Trump said he would solve their problems.”
Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, said the tariffs Mr Trump slapped on Chinese exports had “helped significantly reduce our trade deficit in goods” and that the White House would “continue to crack down on China’s economic aggression”.
Mr Navarro said the deficit had “peaked” in 2018 at $418bn, as Mr Trump began to impose tariffs, and then fell 18 per cent, or $74bn, in 2019. He added that in the first half of 2020, the deficit had fallen 21 per cent compared with the same period last year, although that was partly due to the impact of the pandemic on global trade.
He refused to comment on the fact that the 2019 deficit was barely unchanged from the figure in 2016.
Robert Lighthizer, US trade representative, last week struck an optimistic tone on the implementation of the phase one trade deal following a call with Liu He, his Chinese counterpart.
But the deal is showing signs of weakness. Eight months on, China is on track to miss the targets in the agreement, which said that over two years from 2020, China would buy $200bn more in US goods and services than it did in 2017, before the start of the trade war.
According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, US exports to China of the products covered by the commitments amounted to $48.5bn, compared with a prorated year-to-date target of $100.7bn.
Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute said the US-China trade relationship had deteriorated under Mr Trump despite the phase one deal. He said there was no sense of movement on tackling broader structural issues.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump said China was “more than living up to” its commitments, prompting Tony Blinken, a senior adviser to Mr Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, to accuse him of trying to hoodwink the public.
“The Chinese government has outmanoeuvred President Trump at every turn,” Mr Blinken said. “Instead of matching his tough talk with real action, President Trump has backed down again and again.”
MORE: https://archive.is/X41qV
Original Paywalled: https://www.ft.com/content/081e6d25-8d67-4caa-918a-2765a66f0052
REMINDER:
Republicans blasting China forget that the GOP enabled Beijing's rise
BY MARIK VON RENNENKAMPFF, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/11/20
...But the GOP’s tough talk on China – which, ironically, also strays into conspiracy theory territory – marks the culmination of a particularly stark turnaround. After all, Republicans eagerly enabled China’s meteoric ascent from a sleepy, insular country to the world’s second-largest economy.
Time for a quick history lesson. Throughout the 20th century, China was a poor, agricultural country. In 1978, sweeping economic reforms set China on a path of rapid urbanization. The mass migration of millions of people from China’s rural hinterlands to mega-cities changed the country at a stunning pace.
Indeed, in the span of a few short decades, a vast pool of inexpensive, newly-urbanized labor transformed China from an impoverished, rural economy into a manufacturing juggernaut... MORE: https://thehill.com/opinion/nationa...ng-china-forget-that-the-gop-enabled-beijings
What Republicans did 15 years ago to help create Donald Trump today
The Republican establishment began losing its party to Donald Trump on May 24, 2000, at 5:41 p.m., on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Urged on by their presidential standard-bearer, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and by nearly all of the business lobbyists who represented the core of the party’s donor class, three-quarters of House Republicans voted to extend the status of permanent normal trade relations to China. ... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...d-create-donald-trump-more-than-15-years-ago/
suckers
9/2011: Growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost 2.8 million jobs between 2001 and 2010
...These conclusions about the jobs impact of trade with China arise from the following specific findings of this study:
Most of the jobs lost or displaced by trade with China between 2001 and 2010 were in manufacturing industries (1.93 million jobs, or 69.2%). https://www.epi.org/publication/growing-trade-deficit-china-cost-2-8-million/
Republicans AND Democrats GAVE US Jobs to China so a few ultra-rich could become even richer. Who has been punished?
No one. Those who sold out US jobs were rewarded and their kids kids will never have to lift a finger. Meanwhile, party hacks flood boards like this with calls to re-elect the same brigands over and over and over again. Because one Fu&*ing wasn't enough.
Nice work America.
