Trump's tariff plan a bad deal

By Mitchell Blatt
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, January 20, 2016
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At the Republican presidential debate on January 14, Donald Trump reiterated his proposal to put an extra 45 percent tariff on all goods imported from China to the United States. As usual with Trump's proposals, this one sounded like it was made up on the spot, but Trump has been toying with tariffs and restrictions on foreign countries all along.

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign stop in Spencer, Iowa December 5, 2015. [Photo/China Daily]



When Ford announced it was investing in manufacturing in Mexico in August 2015, Trump proposed leveling a 35 percent tax on automobiles built there. Trump's website says he would label China a "currency manipulator." The Wall Street Journal editorial board has said Trump may be "the most protectionist candidate since Herbert Hoover," who was president from 1929-33 and whose presidency coincided with the start of the Great Depression.

The results could be disastrous for America's economy and foreign relations. First, China isn't even a currency manipulator. Trump has been leveling that false accusation ever since he began his campaign, even though it had already been discredited in May 2015 when the International Monetary Fund stated openly that the yuan isn't undervalued.

Trump's inaccurate claims are likely a shield for his protectionist views. He doesn't want to come right out and say it, because many Republicans espouse support for free trade, but he lets his cover slip from time to time. For example, his attack on Ford for expanding operations in Mexico wasn't linked to any allegations of wrongdoing. It was simply an attack on foreign manufacturing.

Trump has also opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even though it would decrease tariffs for American exports, and it wouldn't even involve China. There, too, Trump blamed China anyway, suggesting China might join TPP later.

It appears clear that Trump's real strategy is just to fear-monger about foreign countries and peoples, and he seizes on China and Mexico, because they are two countries that are often in the news. Economist Dan Clawson wrote, "Protectionism has almost invariably involved racist (e.g., anti-Japanese) and anti-immigrant stances ('they' are taking 'our' jobs; we need to keep 'them' out)."

That fact is illustrated nowhere more clearly than by Trump's campaign. Recently he has received the endorsement of racist white supremacist groups who want to keep non-white people from immigrating. This kind of xenophobic viewpoint held by many of his supporters also drives his anti-foreign trade proposals. The same thought process that attacks Hispanic immigrants for their problems at home will also attack foreigners abroad.

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