The race to be Protectionist in Chief
Didn’t President Biden promise a better trade policy than his predecessor? Well, he now appears to be in a race with Donald Trump to be Protectionist in Chief. Witness his pitch for new tariffs at a campaign stop on Wednesday in Pittsburgh. Speaking at United Steelworkers headquarters—where else?—Mr.
Biden promised to crack down on Chinese imports. “Chinese policies and subsidies for their domestic steel and aluminum industries means high-quality U.S. products are undercut by artificially low-priced Chinese alternatives produced with higher emissions," the White House said in a statement.
The Trump Administration tried to leverage tariffs on Chinese goods to get Beijing to reform its mercantilist policies. It didn’t work. Yet now Mr.
Biden is proposing to triple the 7.5% tariff under Section 301 on certain Chinese steel and aluminum imports. He also teed up a trade investigation into Chinese shipbuilding in response to a petition by the union. While Mr.
Biden has scrapped nearly every Trump policy, he has maintained most of his predecessor’s tariffs despite their economic harm. The Detroit Free Press reported in 2019 that Ford worker profit-sharing checks would be 10% higher if not for Mr. Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and 10% on aluminum.
An analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that each job “saved" by Mr. Trump’s steel tariffs cost consumers and businesses more than $900,000. Employment in iron and steel mills has fallen by about 3,000 since the Section 232 tariffs took effect in 2018.
China’s mercantilism is a special trade problem, but Chinese steel makes up only 2% of U.S. imports and 0.6% of consumption, largely owing to Mr. Trump’s tariffs and antidumping duties.
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