Although the results of the 2024 U.S. election have not yet been announced, Trump has already imagined how to govern after returning to the White House.
According to the global network, former U.S. President Trump talked about his future China policy in an interview with Fox News on the 4th, saying that if he wins this year's presidential election, he will impose at least 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods after taking office.
But at the same time, Trump wants to emphasize that the tax is not a new trade war, and he also wants to "get along" with China, and that "the friendship between China and the United States is great."
Before he became president, Trump wanted to govern
Trump's statement is not new, as early as the end of January this year, some US media broke the news that he was discussing future China policy with the campaign team, including considering imposing more tariffs on all Chinese goods.
If the timeline is pushed forward, the imposition of tariffs would have been one of Trump's usual methods of "maximum pressure". During his first term, Trump invoked the so-called Section 301 to impose tariffs ranging from 7.5 percent to 25 percent on Chinese goods, and threatened to "make China pay" to protect the interests of American workers.
But in fact, since Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, it is not China that has paid the price, but American consumers.
Trump collects taxes, but at what cost?
The ultimate goal of the tariffs is to protect the manufacturing industry, but the state of the U.S. manufacturing industry is also obvious to all. A 2020 report by the Quincy Institute, a think tank, pointed out that Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel exports from countries such as China, Europe, Canada and India, which means that the production costs of related industries such as automobiles and construction in the United States are also quite high, which in turn will reduce the competitiveness of American goods in the global market, and after losing market share, American companies can only lay off workers, and eventually fall into a vicious circle.
If conservative and progressive think tanks and media in the United States are still divided on the evaluation of Trump's other policies, only on tariff policy, the major think tanks and media are surprisingly unanimous in their evaluation, and they unanimously believe that the tariffs have actually harmed the interests of American manufacturing and workers: from 2016 to 2018, at least 1,800 factories closed due to Trump's tariffs, causing the loss of 250,000 jobs.
The cost is borne by the Americans
It can be seen that Trump's tariff policy is, in the final analysis, a set of "seven wounds" that "hurt others and hurt himself", and he originally wanted to protect the American manufacturing industry, but the final result was counterproductive, not only causing more American workers to lose their jobs, but also causing American agricultural products to pay a high price for Trump's policy. For this reason, as early as 2020, the US magazine "Foreign Policy" criticized Trump's "bad trade policy" for making the already dysfunctional US economy worse.
However, it cannot be said that Trump's tariff policy has achieved nothing, at least he has fooled the American workers in the "Rust Belt" and the "redneck" voters in the southern states, who were originally the beneficiaries of the American manufacturing industry, and naturally believe that China, Europe, Japan and other countries have stolen their "jobs".
American think tanks were scolded
From this point of view, before the situation of this year's election is still unclear, Trump talked about imposing tariffs on Chinese goods, which is more like a campaign strategy to fool voters, but Republican voters have already suffered Trump's "loss" four years ago, and it is difficult to say whether they will be fooled again.
In response to Trump's "tariff increases", the response of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the mainland at the end of January this year also made it clear that the essence of China-US economic and trade relations is mutual benefit and win-win results, and it is in the common interests of the two peoples to maintain the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations.
The negative impact of Trump's imposed tariffs on the United States and the global economy is obvious, and European leaders complained about its policy in 2018, which led to the unhappy dissolution of the G7 summit at that time, and the failure of Trump's first term also proves that going against the laws of the economy and confronting the general trend of history will eventually be run over by the wheels of the times.