Biden's anti-China tariffs — an exercise in hypocrisy and self-harm

America’s embrace of protectionism is an admission of weakness — an emblem of the US’s demotion to no-longer-hegemonic status

I’ve written for UnHerd about Biden’s decision to introduce massive tariff hikes on a raft of Chinese imports — including 25% on steel and aluminum, 50% on semiconductors and solar panels, and a staggering 100% on electric vehicles (EVs). The US administration says that this is a reaction to “China’s unfair trade practices” — namely hefty government subsidies — as a result of which China is supposedly “flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports”. But this argument clashes with the fact that this is exactly what the Biden administration has been doing through its much-vaunted Inflation Reduction Act, which includes almost $400 billion in subsidies (through grants, loans and tax credits) aimed at boosting US manufacturing in several cleantech sectors. As I write in the piece:

China, then, isn’t really doing anything different from what the US has always done. But America is riled because China is winning. And having taken up the role of “free trade” defender — accusing the Biden administration of “imped[ing] the normal functioning of global industrial and supply chains” — Beijing is forcing the US to take an increasingly protectionist stance. 

This peculiar reversal of roles is paradigmatic of the significant global economic and geopolitical power shift underway. “Free trade” generally tends to benefit the dominant economic power, at the expense of weaker economies. It is no coincidence that the US began preaching “free trade” only after it achieved economic dominance, in the mid-20th century, after resorting to heavily protectionist measures to support its manufacturing sectors, just as Britain had done before it. 

But China has since surpassed the US as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse — and it has now climbed all the way to the top of the value chain. America’s embrace of protectionism is, therefore, an admission of weakness, as it is demoted to no-longer-hegemonic status.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

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