End Trump’s Trade War? Easy Inflation Win Could Backfire on Biden
Removing tariffs on Chinese imports would lower prices but open the president to Republican attacks.
U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the White House’s Roosevelt Room on Nov. 15, 2021.
Source: Getty Images
Despite his criticism of Donald Trump’s foreign policy, President Joe Biden has held fast to many aspects of it, from sanctions on Iran to the embargo on Cuba. Yet as inflation surges and threatens to undermine the U.S. economic recovery, the president is in a bind when it comes to Trump-era tariffs on China.
Economists say undoing those tariffs would lower prices, offering immediate relief to American consumers. Yet removing the tariffs without getting much in return from Beijing would allow Republicans to castigate Biden as soft on America’s biggest competitor—an accusation Trump repeatedly lobbed at his rival during the 2020 presidential race. The political case for China hawkishness is clear: Polls show a sharp rise in recent years in the share of Americans who view China negatively. Plus, there’s now a bipartisan consensus in Washington that previous diplomatic approaches to change China’s economic behavior haven’t worked and a case for using the tariffs as leverage in new trade talks.