President Biden now tries to out-Trump former President Trump on protectionist trade policies. Not only did he leave most of Trump’s tariffs in place, he matched Trump’s call for 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs and supported a Section 301 petition that, when implemented, will impose still undetermined port duties on Chinese-built ships.
Bilateral trade restrictions like those reduce the economic output of both trading partners. Specifically, the tariffs and port duties hurt U.S. consumers by raising the price they pay for Chinese goods and hurt Chinese manufacturers by eliminating their cost advantages. U.S. manufacturers may benefit, but it is just as likely that untaxed foreign producers that are more efficient than U.S. ones, like Japanese shipbuilders or European EV makers, will gain instead.
By raising the price of all EVs sold in the U.S., tariffs on Chinese EVs will also discourage EV adoption, a purported goal of the Biden administration’s so-called Green New Deal.
Why, then, would Biden turn toward Trumpian protectionism? Because it will certainly generate votes in November.
U.S. politicians routinely lie to the media and the public, so the only way to know what policymakers are truly thinking is to access their correspondence via a FOIA request. If that is unavailable, as it usually is because they routinely illegally destroy official correspondence, use unofficial back channels to communicate, or redact key information from the documents they are forced to disclose, analysts must follow the money or votes by analyzing who wins or loses, or who thinks they will win or lose, due to specific policy changes.
One possibility is that the Biden administration believes that high tariffs will somehow reduce Chinese military capacity. That seems unlikely, however, as the tie is tenuous. Moreover, the last time that the U.S. imposed heavy economic sanctions and other economic costs on an ambitious East Asian empire, war resulted.
More likely, Biden’s handlers believe that he can take voters from Trump, specifically some untold number of millions who like Trump’s trade policies but who dislike Trump himself, by implementing Trumpian tariffs. Moreover, because independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has also come out in favor of tariffs against China (and any other nation that allows the “exploitation of workers”), Biden does not have to worry about losing any votes due to his trade policies.
Some subset of the anti-Trump the man, pro-Trump trade policy bloc might overlook Biden’s other policies, like the open southern border, just to avoid voting for Trump while still getting Trump-like tariffs. As it becomes clear to Biden’s advisors, however, that most swing voters (not dedicated to either major party) do not believe Biden’s claim that Republicans are to blame for the border crisis by blocking border reform legislation, look for Biden to make some grand gesture towards border security in the months before the November general election, as he tries to win over more of the swing bloc.
That Biden would sacrifice consumer interests to gain votes is unsurprising. Like other U.S. presidents dating back at least to Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), Biden openly buys votes with taxpayer money. He continues to insist on student debt relief, for example, even though the courts have rebuffed his previous plans. Here, the strategy seems to be to appear to put up a good fight, but if U.S. courts stymie his efforts he can credibly pledge to get a student debt relief bill through Congress during his second term.
High tariffs on Chinese ships and EVs hurt most Americans in their role as consumers. The costs per American per year are too modest to force them to take action, but for decades they understood that free trade promotes their interests and voted accordingly. How, then, can all three leading candidates for president in 2024 support tariffs?
The events of 2020-22 proved that many, if not most, Americans have been poorly educated in biology, economics, and civics. Most willingly followed obviously flawed pandemic policies, many of which were concocted out of thin air (social distancing and masking), and took untested, experimental vaccines simply because authority figures told them to. Government censorship of dissenting voices pointing to the misaligned incentives of vaccine manufacturers and the self-serving regulations and lockdowns imposed by politicians made it difficult to direct people toward unbiased sources and more logical analyses of data about Covid IFR, vaccine danger signals, and the like. Trillions of dollars and millions of lives were lost as a result.
When it comes to economic policies, government censorship is largely unnecessary because aside from those interested in investment decisions, most Americans do not seek out alternative economic policy viewpoints, or fully grasp any randomly encountered. Were a claim about the destructive nature of trade restrictions against China to become popular, however, the U.S. government now has all the tools necessary to squelch it and to discredit the author(s), just as it discredited and disqualified doctors pointing to the true nature of Covid-19 and the effective clinical treatments they developed during the pandemic.
In short, so long as the U.S. government can force traditional mass and social media to censor contrary viewpoints, its policies, including its economic policies, voters will not constrain policymakers. Higher prices will be put down to “corporate greed” and restricted supplies to “global supply conditions.” Budget deficits will continue to grow and military aid to flow. In short, expect more economically irrational policies from Washington.
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