Thus forfilling a policy Domnald Trump tried and failed at…..
Ah?
My wife asked me…..
Raising the price on ‘cheap’ Chinese consumer good means that they would cost us more?
Yup…..
Isn’t that what is the problem NOW with the American economy?
High consumer prices?
Yup….
Okay?
So how is the President helping the American economy since Americans do NOT make ‘cheap’ products…..
I don’t know Huny…..
I don’t know….
But he DOES need some votes come November….
Higher prices and high interest rates ain’t helping us or a LOT of people that will vote come November….
But some American workers will like Biden’s following Trump’s lead on import taxes , and vote for Biden….
The President is gambling he’ll carry enough of both sides of this to get a win come November….
For the first two decades of the 21st century, many consumer products on America’s store shelves got less expensive. A wave of imports from China and other emerging economies helped push down the cost of video games, T-shirts, dining tables, home appliances and more.
Those imports drove some American factories out of business, and they cost more than a million workers their jobs. Discount stores and online retailers, like Walmart and Amazon, flourished selling low-cost goods made overseas. But voters rebelled. Stung by shuttered factories, cratered industries and prolonged wage stagnation, Americans in 2016 elected a president who vowed to hit back at China on trade. Four years later, they elected another one.
In separate but overlapping efforts, former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden have sought to revive and protect American factories by making it more expensive to buy Chinese goods. They have taxed imports in legacy industries that were hollowed out over the last quarter-century, like clothes and appliances, and newer ones that are struggling to grow amid global competition with China, like solar panels.
Mr. Biden’s decision on Tuesday to codify and escalate tariffsimposed by Mr. Trump made clear that the United States has closed out a decades-long era that embraced trade with China and prized the gains of lower-cost products over the loss of geographically concentrated manufacturing jobs. A single tariff rate embodies that closure: a 100 percent tax on Chinese electric vehicles, which start at less than $10,000 each and have surged into showrooms around the world, but have struggled to crack government barriers to the U.S. market…
…
It is unclear what new era of policymaking will emerge from those political incentives: Mr. Biden’s brand of strategic industrial policy, Mr. Trump’s retrenchment to a more self-contained domestic economy, or something else entirely.
It is also not clear whether the American public, still reeling from the country’s most rapid burst of inflation in 40 years, will tolerate the pains that could accompany the transition..
…
But consumers and voters, Mr. Autor cautioned, “can’t have it both ways. You can make a trade-off. All the world is trade-offs. If you want to get to the point where the U.S. maintains and regains leadership in these technological areas, you’re going to have to pay more. And it’s not clear it’ll work.”
Despite their mutual embrace of forms of protectionism, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are offering voters contrasting views of how the American economy should engage with China in their rematch election.
Mr. Trump wants to tear down the bridges of commerce between the world’s two largest economies and dramatically restrict trade overall. He has pledged to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports, by revoking the “most favored nation” trade status that Congress voted to bestow on China at the end of the Clinton administration, and ban some Chinese goods entirely. He would impose new taxes on all imports from around the world.
Mr. Trump bluntly asserts China will pay the cost of those tariffs, not consumers, though detailed economic studies contradict him….
…
His latest research warns of the economic perils of poorly designed trade policy, but it also explains why presidents might keep pursuing it. In a recent paper, written with several fellow economists, Mr. Autor found that Mr. Trump’s tariff-centered approach did not succeed in bringing many factory jobs back to America.
But, the economists found, the policy seemed to have won Mr. Trump and his party more votes….