Tag: foreign affairs

“”The China tariffs are, in my view, a significant piece of leverage—and a trade negotiator never walks away from leverage,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said at that time. The Biden administration, she added, was seeking to turn that “leverage into a strategic program that will strengthen American competitiveness and defend our interests in a global economy in which China will continue to play.”
More than two years later, and nearly four years after Biden took office, what has that supposed leverage accomplished? Tai provided the answer to that question this week during an interview with Bloomberg.

“We really haven’t seen the [People’s Republic of China] make any changes to its fundamental systemic structural policies that would make sense for us to provide any relaxation,” Tai told reporter Eric Martin for his Supply Lines newsletter.

In fact, Tai noted that there aren’t any ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and China right now—but don’t worry, she’s still insistent that the tariffs are useful for…something. “At the moment we are not negotiating anything with the PRC on trade,” she told Martin, “but one day we may be back at the table, in which case these tariffs will be useful as leverage, right?”

In summary, Tai’s position seems to be that American businesses and families must continue bearing the cost of the Trump-Biden tariffs even though those tariffs have plainly failed to achieve their primary policy goal (changing China’s behavior) because there’s a chance that someday, somehow, that might make a difference.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/15/bidens-top-trade-official-just-admitted-tariffs-havent-changed-chinas-behavior/