From steel and aluminum tariffs to grain subsidies to boosting exports of liquefied natural gas, very few corners of the global commodities market eluded Donald Trump’s attention. There was at least one memo, executive order, pronouncement or tweet bringing some sort of attention to uranium, soybeans, and rare earths, the kinds of materials that haven’t received attention from American presidents in years.

Now, with Joe Biden winning the election, how will the next U.S. president diverge from his predecessor, and where he might keep the status quo?

Steel and Aluminum

The biggest issues in steel and aluminum are very similar, given these two industries — especially steel — were a top priority for the Trump administration. Tariffs aren’t expected to go away any time soon under Biden, and market participants have adjusted for the 25% duty on steel imports and the 10% levy on aluminum.

Removing them would be like catching a falling knife: It would alienate voters across the Midwest who helped Biden across the finish line. It would also lead U.S. Steel Corp. and Century Aluminum Co., among others, and the United Steelworkers union to lobby for some sort of new trade action to protect their industries.

Biden is more likely to maintain the tariffs and work with key allies — including the European Union, Japan and Canada — to form a bloc opposing the subsidies China gives to its industries, which produce more than half of the world’s steel and aluminum. The Trump administration openly shunned multilateral trade partnerships, so this would be a big change in policy. It’s still unclear, though, what policies Biden would enact to further protect the industries, both of whom claim need more help.

LNG

Trump administration officials criss-crossed Europe and Asia in 2019 touting U.S. LNG exports as “freedom gas” and “molecules of U.S. freedom,” but trade wars hurt sales as did environmental concerns over flaring in the Permian Basin and other emissions associated with production and shipment.

Biden didn’t state a position about LNG on his campaign website but boasts a plan to reduce methane emissions and flaring, which European buyers would welcome. Biden was vice president when the Obama administration approved permits for all six of the current LNG export terminals.

Political observers believe that Biden would bring the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement, an environmental treaty between nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. With buyers across the globe seeking greener or carbon-neutral LNG cargoes, the move might benefit U.S. exporters.

“Our biggest concern is American LNG exports to Asia and to Europe, and how those have declined as a consequence of some of these trade wars,” said Mike Sommers, the president of the American Petroleum Institute. As a previous longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden “has a firm understanding of how important American energy independence is from a foreign policy perspective as well,” he said.

Oil

Energy will likely be on the table in U.S. trade talks with China.

“As long as U.S. energy production such as shale oil, LPG and natural gas exceeds domestic demand, America would be an exporter,” said Sandy Fielden, director of research for Morningstar Inc. “So China, as the world’s largest consumer, will use energy as a bargaining chip. A Biden administration would implement a measured trade policy without the Trump tit-for-tat noise.”

“With a Biden victory, what you’re going to expect is a lot less trade uncertainty, and that is great for oil prices,” said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at Oanda Corp. “We see the best demand when globalization is trending.”

Despite ratcheting up sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company, Trump wasn’t able to dislodge Nicolas Maduro. Analysts say that a Biden victory won’t necessarily reverse all the measures taken against Maduro.

Biden will seek to re-enter the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and lift sanctions on the country, according to RBC Capital Markets’ Helima Croft. “We continue to anticipate Iran being able to return around 1 million barrels a day of exports back to the market by the second half of 2021,” Croft said in a note.

Dairy

U.S. officials have pushed for stricter Canadian enforcement of the terms of dairy trade outlined in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, an area that could see fresh attention after the election. Only a small portion of U.S. cheese, dry milk and other dairy products crosses the border to Canadian markets. Still, many American dairies and processors have insisted that primarily their lower-value ingredients like powders are imported by Canada, while higher-value finished products like fine cheeses are largely barred. The U.S. and other large dairy producers around the globe have also criticized Canada’s below-market-priced exports as unfair competition.

A Biden presidency may slow some progress the industry is pushing for as guidelines around trade between the U.S. and Canada cement through the end of the year. While dairy policy tends to capture bipartisan support, some market watchers are concerned that Biden’s team may not share the Trump administration’s skepticism of Canada’s dairy trade and pricing systems, potentially delaying or tempering efforts to change them.

Grains

A Biden presidency could lead to warmer trade relations with China, supporting the rally in corn, wheat and soybeans, which hit a four-year high. He may roll back tariffs on Chinese goods, paving the way for more U.S. exports of agricultural products to Asia.

Exports to China have surged, but that’s largely due to market forces that made America the best source of corn and soybeans. Many earlier this year speculated that China would wait until the election to question the phase-one trade deal or trigger a clause that allows the Asian nation not to fulfill its pledges due to the pandemic.

Even with the surge in the second half of the year, shipments of agricultural and related products through September were about 38% of the deal target. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said last month that 71% of the target has been reached.

China is rebuilding its hog herd more quickly than expected after being hit by African swine fever, a deadly virus that kills most infected pigs within 10 days. The Asian nation has already purchased a record amount of American corn, and sales of soybeans are running at their highest level in data going back to 1991. U.S. pork exports are at a record and sorghum and beef sales also gained a boost.

“China is implementing and purchasing under the phase one agreement,” Dave MacLennan, Cargill Inc.’s chief executive officer, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. But “most of the activity we believe is driven by pure economics, demand driven,” he said.

— With assistance by Justina Vasquez, Stephen Cunningham, Sergio Chapa, Andres Guerra Luz, Sheela Tobben, Lucia Kassai, Michael Jeffers, and Isis Almeida

Joe Deaux is a commodity and metal reporter for Bloomberg. 

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Higher prices also made steel more expensive for manufacturers that buy it, leading to the loss of about 75,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs, according to a study released late last year by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

The tariffs led to retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. exports. Harley-Davidson Inc. shifted motorcycle production for Europe to an overseas plant in 2018 after the European Union slapped a 31% tariff on U.S.-made bikes.

Those repercussions weren’t expected when Mr. Trump sketched out his tariff-led trade and infrastructure policy at a 2016 campaign speech in Monessen, Pa., a steel town south of Pittsburgh.

“We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country,” Mr. Trump said in 2016. “This alone will create massive numbers of jobs.”

The president’s “America First” strategy for trade and his pledge to restore the region’s steel and coal-mining sectors attracted steelworkers who used to be reliable voters for Democratic candidates. Their support helped Mr. Trump take Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes in 2016.

“They want their livelihoods protected,” said Tim Ulery, 43 years old, an hourly worker at U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works near Pittsburgh, who said he again plans to vote for Mr. Trump. “I believe the tariff helped our plant.”

Mr. Ulery credits the tariff with giving company executives the confidence to invest in making Mon Valley more cost-competitive with newer mills. U.S. Steel in May 2019 revealed plans to replace a caster and rolling line to lower the cost of producing sheet steel.

Justin Ellsworth, a steelworker for 15 years at Mon Valley, which is spread out along the banks of the Monongahela River, said he believes most of his co-workers will still vote for Mr. Trump, but said he plans to cast his ballot for Democratic nominee Joe Biden —in part because of what Mr. Ellsworth considers a failed tariff policy.

Mr. Ellsworth, who voted for the Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, said U.S. Steel and other steel companies continue to rack up losses. The tariff also alienated car markers and other manufacturers forced to pay more for steel without getting any benefits in return, he said.

“The approach rubbed me the wrong way,” said Mr. Ellsworth, 39. “The tariffs were politicized.”

 

 

Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel was one of the leading advocates for the tariff, saying the duties were needed to protect the domestic steel market from an increasing volume of inexpensive, foreign-made steel. By driving up prices for imported steel, domestic steelmakers were able to raise their own prices and increase profits.

“By reducing imports, the tariff strengthened the domestic steel industry and our country’s manufacturing base,” U.S. Steel said in a written statement.

Industry analysts, however, said the Trump tariffs haven’t significantly eased the global glut of steel that encourages exports and depresses prices. The industry had already received tariff relief on specific products from China, South Korea and other countries found to be in violation of trade laws by the Commerce Department during the Obama administration.

With the 25% tariff on imports propelling domestic steel prices, the benchmark sheet-steel price surged to a 10-year high at $920 a ton within four months after tariffs started in March 2018.

Steelmakers boosted production as prices climbed. U.S. Steel restarted two blast furnaces in 2018 at its Granite City, Ill., mill that had been idle since 2015, and recalled 500 workers who were laid off when the furnaces were turned down.

Steel companies rolled out plans for new mills, too. Nucor Corp. NUE -2.41% , Steel Dynamics Inc. STLD -2.83% and other companies are adding capacity for nearly 11 million tons of flat-rolled steel annually in Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas and other states.

All that new capacity, however, will eventually saturate the U.S. market, where steel consumption is expected to decline in the coming years. Analysts said they doubt that steel prices, which have been hit hard this year by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, will soon return 2018’s highs.

The new, highly efficient mills entering the market will put pressure on older mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere in the Midwest that most need high steel prices to operate profitably. They rely on a higher-cost integrated production process that melts iron ore in blast furnaces fueled by coal.

As much as one-third of the production from these mills is at risk of closing in the coming years, said Christopher Plummer, managing director of market-consulting firm Metal Strategies Inc. in Pennsylvania.

“There’s no way you can bring that kind of new capacity on without having bodog sportsbook review some negative impact on pricing,” he said.

Bob Tita covers manufacturing and industrial companies from The Wall Street Journal’s Chicago Bureau. 

William Mauldin is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. 

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On climate change, Trump’s dismal legacy would be quickly wiped out. Biden has pledged to rejoin the 2015 Paris climate agreement “on day one” of his administration, achieve climate neutrality by 2050, and lead a global coalition against the climate threat. If this happens, Trump’s noisy denial of scientific evidence will be remembered as a minor blip.

In a surprisingly large number of domains, Trump has done little or has behaved too erratically to leave an imprint. Global financial regulation has not changed fundamentally during his term, and his administration has flip-flopped regarding the fight against tax havens. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have carried on working more or less smoothly, and Trump’s furious tweeting did not prevent the US Federal Reserve from continuing to act responsibly, including by providing dollar liquidity to key international partners during the COVID-19 crisis. True, Trump has repeatedly spoiled international summits, leaving his fellow leaders flummoxed. But such behaviour has been more embarrassing than consequential.

In contrast, Trump will be remembered for his trade initiatives. Although it has always been difficult to determine the real aims of an administration beset by infighting, three key goals now stand out: reshoring of manufacturing, an overhaul of the World Trade Organisation and economic decoupling from China. Each objective is likely to outlast Trump’s tenure, at least in part.

Reshoring looked like a costly fantasy four years ago, and it still is in many respects. As my Peterson Institute colleague Chad Bown has documented, Trump’s chaotic trade war with the world has often hurt US economic interests. But reshoring as a policy objective has gained new life after the pandemic exposed the vulnerability entailed by depending exclusively on global sourcing. Biden has endorsed the idea and ‘economic sovereignty’ – whatever that means – is now everywhere the new mantra.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer claims that a “reset” of the WTO has been a high priority for the administration. If so, it has made some headway. The other G7 countries now share the long-standing US dissatisfaction with the WTO’s leniency toward China’s government subsidies and weak intellectual-property protection. There is also a recognition that some US grievances against WTO dispute-settlement procedures (and in particular the so-called Appellate Body) are valid. But whether the battle ends with a reset or a decomposition of the multilateral trading system remains to be seen.

The major watershed is US-China relations. Although bilateral tensions were apparent before Trump’s election in 2016, nobody spoke of a ‘decoupling’ of two countries that had become tightly integrated economically and financially. Four years later, decoupling has begun on several fronts, from technology to trade and investment. Nowadays, US Republicans and Democrats alike view bilateral economic ties through a geopolitical lens.

It is not clear whether Trump merely precipitated a rupture that was already in the making. He is not responsible for President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian assertiveness, and he did not devise the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s massive transnational infrastructure and credit programme. But it was Trump who ditched Barack Obama’s carefully balanced China strategy in favour of a brutally adversarial stance that left no scope for events to take a different course. Whatever the cause of decoupling, there won’t be a return to the status quo.

A Biden administration would also not find it easy to reach the candidate’s aim of restoring ties with US allies, like-minded democracies, and partners around the world. Until Trump’s presidency, much of the world had become accustomed to regarding the US as the main architect of the international economic system. As Adam Posen, also of the Peterson Institute, has argued, the US was a sort of chair for life of a global club whose rules it had largely conceived but still had to abide by. The US could collect dues but was also bound by duties, and had to forge a consensus on amendments to the rules.

Trump’s trademark has been to reject this approach and treat all other countries as competitors, rivals or enemies, his overriding objective being to maximise the rent that the US can extract from its still-dominant economic position. America First epitomises his explicit promotion of a narrow definition of national interest.

Even if the US under Biden were willing to make again credible international commitments, its outlook may change lastingly. Former Trump adviser Nadia Schadlow has argued that Trump’s tenure will be remembered as the moment when the world pivoted away from a unipolar paradigm to one of great-power competition.

It is by no means obvious that if Biden wins, he will be able to restore the trust of America’s international partners. For all its aberrations, Trump’s presidency may indicate a deeper US reaction to the shift in global economic power, and reflect the American public’s rejection of the foreign responsibilities their country endorsed for three-quarters of a century. The old belief among US allies and economic partners that Americans will “ultimately do the right thing,” as Winston Churchill reputedly said, may be gone.

Anyhow, Trump’s peculiar behaviour has made it easy for America’s allies to postpone hard choices. That seems particularly true of Europe. A Biden-led US might seem like a familiar partner to most European leaders. But if it asked them to take sides in the confrontation with China, Europe would no longer be able to put off its own moment of decision.

Jean Pisani-Ferry holds the Tommaso Padoa Schioppa chair of the European University Institute in Florence and is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank. He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris) and the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin).

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Last year, the U.S. exported $106 billion worth of goods to China. About $68 billion worth of those exports are covered in the Phase One deal, and China has agreed to purchase more than double that over the next two years.

Those include soybeans, cotton, lobsters, cars, crude oil, semiconductors, and more.

But what about the goods China won’t be buying more of? What about the other $38 billion worth of goods U.S. exporters normally sell to China?

The biggest items that were left out of the deal were civilian aircraft, engines, and parts, which the U.S. exported more than $10 billion worth of to China last year.

Other items—which may not grab headlines like soybean and corn sales—include optical equipment, motor vehicle parts, chemicals and plastics, platinum, scrap (paper, copper, aluminum), and other miscellaneous goods.

Nonetheless, those are goods Americans work hard to create and sell when and where they can.

The administration has given no indication of whether more purchases will be included in the second—Phase Two—deal with China. It has indicated that Phase Two is to include more structural issues, like dealing with China’s government support for its industries.

But even then, Phase Two negotiations are a long way off.

In fact, the administration isn’t even thinking about Phase Two right now.

That makes sense, given that Phase One was just signed in January. Negotiations will likely have to wait until 2021, and progress on Phase One is measurable. But it also means Americans will have to continuing paying high tariffs on imports from China.

The administration has said tariffs on $370 billion worth of imports from China will remain until Phase Two is finished.

But even then, the administration’s lead negotiator is no longer sure what the goal of the past three years of the U.S.-China trade war has become.

“I don’t know what the end goal is,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said. “Right now, we need to stop an aggressive force.”

At one time, the administration’s goal was closing the trade deficit with China, which is a dubious objective, given the value that both exports and imports bring to the U.S. economy.

It’s also a goal that hasn’t been met. After actually increasing in 2017-2018, the goods trade deficit with China in 2019 is about the same as it was in 2016. 

Nevertheless, if the administration wanted the Chinese to buy more U.S. goods, why not ask them to buy more of all U.S. exports, instead of picking winners and losers?

Better yet, why not focus on the sort of structural trade liberalization in both the U.S. and China that would raise overall volumes of trade, a measure that has declined since 2016? 

Now that would be a Phase Two worth having.  

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On the outside, the United States remains the EU’s main trading partner, with European exports to the US last year amounting to 384 billion euros. The United States is also the second biggest provider of goods and services to Europe, after China.  However, by the close of 2019, most EU countries were already balancing between stagnation and recession – not least due to Washington’s economic policies, as the Trump administration kept threatening to slap additional duties on European exports. In addition, Europeans feel the pinch of declining world trade caused by Washington’s trade war with Beijing.

Donald Trump won the presidency on the strength of his promise to maintain America’s leading position in the world, which he sees as the scene of tooth-and-claw competition between states. From this standpoint, all countries not ready to accept Washington’s terms, especially those pursuing an independent policy, are viewed as a “legitimate” target for pressure, primarily an economic one. Since 2018, Washington has been ramping up sanctions and trade restrictions against many leading world powers, including in Europe and, hating as the Europeans are to avoid a politicization of their trade relations with the US, almost each new trade dispute demonstrates geopolitical undertones that are hard to ignore.  

For example, Washington regularly threatens to impose a 25 percent tax bodog online casino on imported European cars and spare parts, above all German.   Amid Washington’s isolationist policy, Germany is now seen by many Europeans as a potential new leader of the Western community and apparently the primary target of Donald Trump’s attacks against Europeans. Indeed, it was Angela Merkel who, after the first NATO summit attended by Trump, said that Europe can no longer rely on America. Since then, Berlin has been increasingly vocal in pointing, more than anyone else in the EU, at cardinal changes in Washington’s interests in the Old World, above all its desire to undermine Europe’s global competitiveness. On July 1, Germany took over the EU Council’s rotating chair for the next six months, which is likely to further intensify these disagreements.

In October 2019, the United States imposed tariffs on a number of imported European goods, formally justifying this by a WTO ruling that the European Union had not complied with an order to end illegal subsidies for its plane-maker Airbus.

The Americans and Europeans have long been at loggerheads over who violates the WTO rules by providing state assistance to their aviation industry. However, now that Washington is trying hard to limit the supply of high-tech products to the “wrong” countries, transatlantic bickering over subsidized airplane exports is becoming extremely important in terms of foreign policy. And in light of the colossal damage the global aviation industry may suffer as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this could put the entire technological future of the European Union on the line. 

A similar situation has been developing also around the idea, actively promoted by the EU leadership and a number of EU countries, to impose the so-called “digital tax” on services provided to European consumers by major US technology companies, above all Amazon, Facebook and Google. Meanwhile, in the United States, the geostrategic motives behind the European initiatives is becoming clear not only to observers, but to the White House as well.

Europe is lagging far behind the US and China when it comes to companies providing services in social platforms, e-commerce and cloud computing. Experts warn that the “alternative” to the general strategy is more than just a further reduction of the EU’s role in the development and implementation of advanced software and technical solutions. If the EU countries fail to adapt to the changing technological paradigm, they may be faced with rising unemployment and falling tax revenues across the board. 

According to experts interviewed by The Economist Intelligence Unit, any of the abovementioned topics may set off a destructive trade war on both sides of the Atlantic. Well, Germany will certainly not be the sole victim of jacked up US tariffs on European car imports, as the auto industry accounts for up to six percent of all EU jobs. In addition to the direct damage from falling exports to the United States and third countries, new US sanctions would seriously undermine the overall business climate in the European Union. Brussels would have to impose retaliatory sanctions, which, in turn, would set the stage for a global trade war that would not leave any country untouched. The costs of doing business will go up, while profits will go down. Due to a falling demand in domestic markets, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, companies will not be able to pass their losses to the consumers, and will suffer ever new losses.

It took Europeans quite a while to realize that growing transatlantic disagreements “constitute an essential debate” over the priorities and goals of “Western policy in the world in the wake of the late 20^th – early 21^st century globalization.” A sizeable portion of the American establishment is no longer interested in dominance per se, as US national interests are now realized “in confrontation with major rivals,” including Europe. 

The Trump administration insists that the situation can only be changed by America acting in such a way as to reap direct and immediate benefits measured in dollars. “Friendship” with America should pay off right away, providing economic concessions for Washington is just a way of monetizing one’s allied relations with the United States. While during the Cold War, tactical economic differences were smoothed out by shared strategic interests amid a bipolar confrontation, these days, if “there are no shared  fundamental interests between them” the United States and Europe “are simply competitors on many tracks” – something Trump never tires of repeating.

The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic has led to a serious new discord between Europe and America, with the shock from the pandemic on both sides of the Atlantic proving strong enough to force the nominal allies to start fighting each other for resources. Everyone is on his own now. The situation with the pandemic and its socio-economic impact on the United States has been so bad that it now threatens to undermine Donald Trump’s chances for reelection. Meanwhile, trade policy is one of the political levers that the US president can use quickly and without having to ask for Congressional approval.

Previously, this approach often worked with the European Union, usually ready to give up some of its economic sovereignty. The Europeans’ reaction was restrained and “asymmetric” in nature. This is how they reacted to Trump’s increasingly aggressive attacks just a year of two ago. Experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe and on the INF Treaty believe that although the EU’s domestic market and combined GDP are roughly similar in size to America’s, “Europe’s economic dependence on the US is much higher than America’s dependence on the European Union, which still makes Brussels extremely vulnerable to economic pressure from Washington.” 

That being said, the hard-hitting socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing Europe to realize the need to protect and advance its economic interests. A pessimistic forecast is based on the notion that the pandemic will bring about a long-term economic downturn and even exacerbate it. The Eurozone economy is projected to post a seven to 10 percent drop this year – twice as much as during the crisis of 2009. Even the “hundreds of billions of euros” that European politicians are talking about may not be enough to overcome the consequences of the coronacrisis any time soon, largely due to the global nature of its impact on the entire system of global economic relations. This may prove a serious problem. As [French President] Emmanuel Macron often says, “If the crisis widens the split between the economies of the bloc, the European project could explode.”

Meanwhile, much now depends on the position of Germany where almost all parliamentary factions see the threat of new US sanctions as “a violation of international law and, above all, an infringement of European sovereignty.” Europe needs to push back against America’s “aggressive attacks.” Well, in the midst of a pandemic and a deep recession caused by it, “a trade war is the last thing that Americans and Europeans need. However, a positive partnership is possible only on an equal basis which, among other things, means respect for the sovereignty of each partner.”

Against the backcloth of extremely worrying forecasts for the European economy, Chancellor Angela Merkel told The Guardian that it is in the best interest of all EU countries to fully support the European domestic market and act as one in the international arena. Faced with “extraordinary” circumstances, Berlin expects all EU member states to focus on “what brings us together.” Moreover, “much” depends on the stability of the European economy. For example, a sharp spike in unemployment can have devastating political consequences, and even “increase the threat to democracy.”

“For Europe to survive, its economy must survive,” Merkel emphasized.

According to numerous forecasts, in the post-coronavirus world, almost all countries will focus on internal problems, on increasing their economic self-sufficiency and even autonomy. The world may become “poorer and more cost-effective,” and the process of globalization will, at best, come to a halt and stay so for several years. Right now, faced with multiple crises, Europe, may be tempted to take its time and wait, at least until after the November presidential elections in the US. By then, the scope of the economic damage from the pandemic will become clearer. What is obvious, however, is that only by resolutely standing up to America, especially if this resistance ultimately results in a “deal” more beneficial to Europeans, will the EU be able to restore its geopolitical weight in international affairs.

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At the outset of his Administration, President Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and stated his preference for bilateral trade deals, not multilateral agreements. In three and a half years, the Trump Administration has negotiated:

1. A market access agreement with Japan, signed in 2019, on “certain agriculture and industrial goods, as well as on digital trade”.[1]
2. Phase One of an agreement with China, signed in 2020. China is implementing some of the provisions of the Agreement but its purchases of U.S. products have fallen short of the agreed targets. Geo-political issues now threaten the full implementation of Phase One’s goals.  
3. A revision in 2019 of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Republic of Korea that included restrictions on Korean steel exports, an extension of protection for U.S. truck manufacturers, a Korean commitment to double its imports of U.S. cars that meet U.S. safety standards, and other measures.
4. A market access agreement on U.S. exports of poultry meat and products to Morocco, a country with which the U.S. already has a FTA.
5. A market access agreement with Tunisia on U.S. beef, poultry, and egg exports.

The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) also commenced bilateral trade negotiations with the UK and the EU, and announced its intention to negotiate an FTA with Kenya.[2] U.S. and UK negotiators have made some progress, but completing the negotiation and securing Congressional approval of a U.S.-UK FTA before the end of this year appears unlikely. The negotiations with the EU have stalled.[3] A negotiation on a bilateral agreement with Kenya is just getting underway.[4]

The Administration did update the NAFTA in a trilateral negotiation with Canada and Mexico. The USMCA added significant provisions on e-commerce, SMEs, labor, and the environment, drawing on the text of the TPP to cover trade issues that had arisen since the negotiation of the NAFTA in the 1990s.  It also weakened dispute settlement mechanisms and added provisions intended to manage trade in the automotive sector. The USMCA entered into force on July 1, 2020.

Recourse to protectionism has been another hallmark of the Trump Administration’s trade policy. In January 2018, Trump imposed tariffs on solar panels (30%) and washing machines (50%). In March 2018, he imposed tariffs on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%) from most U.S. trading partners. Months later, the Administration extended the steel and aluminum tariffs to the EU, Canada, and Mexico. However, the Administration did agree to exemptions for Canada and Mexico in May 2019.[5]

The most important protectionist measures were those directed toward China. The escalation of tensions with China began in July 2018, with a 25% import tariff levied on $34 billion of Chinese products. By the beginning of 2020, before the Phase One deal was signed, tit-for-tat tariffs had resulted in over $360 billion of Chinese products facing higher tariffs, about two-thirds of the total value of U.S. imports from China. China had placed retaliatory tariffs on a combined $110 billion of imports from the United States. Until now, the United States has unilaterally imposed trade and investment restrictions on China and will, in all likelihood, continue to do so. However, in late June, Secretary of State Pompeo did indicate a willingness to join a joint EU-U.S. dialogue with China.[6]

Retaliation by the EU, China, and other countries targeted by U.S. trade restrictions has already posed serious barriers bodog casino to some U.S. exports. Undeterred, the Administration is now considering another round of tariff increases directed at the EU and has threatened to break Phase One commitments by imposing further tariffs on China in response to what Trump views as mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak. It is unlikely that the two countries will be able to reach this year a Phase Two agreement that would include state owned enterprises and intellectual property.

The tariffs placed on China in addition to the others imposed by the Trump Administration have resulted in U.S. importers paying $147.7 billion in customs duties to the U.S. Treasury since January 2018, in effect, a tax on U.S. consumption.[7] To offset the declines in U.S. exports resulting from retaliation, the Trump Administration paid over $22 billion to farmers in 2019, the highest farm subsidy total in 14 years.[8] Driving these payments were trade-related subsidies, which accounted for $14 billion of the total. The Administration has recently shown its willingness to expand aid by the Department of Agriculture to additional U.S. producers. Last month, for example, the Administration laid out its plan to help lobster producers offset damages related to trade tensions with China.[9] 

The Trump Administration’s pursuit of limited bilateral agreement is at odds with the worldwide growth of FTAs since 2000. We highlighted increases in the number of FTAs in our 2018 post in WITA’s “America’s Trade Policy.”[10] In that analysis of FTA trends, we found that the six most important U.S. trading partners had negotiated and signed 95 FTAs through 2017. Those countries have continued to negotiate new trade agreements. Since the beginning of 2018, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Japan have each signed two FTAs, China has signed four, and the EU has signed three. As the updated chart below shows, the total number of FTAs signed by those six nations now stands at 101. Meanwhile, the U.S. has only signed one FTA since 2017, the USMCA, a revision of the NAFTA. The U.S. has not negotiated a new FTA since 2007.

It is important to note that FTAs cover substantially all mutual trade of the signatories under GATT Article XXIV. The FTAs signed by the EU and the other five countries shown in the chart meet the GATT Article XXIV standard. In contrast, the Trump Administration’s market access agreements do not, as they cover only specific industries or products.

Ambassador Lighthizer has defended the Trump Administration’s emphasis on bilateral agreements despite the paucity of results to date. He has also complained about the acceleration of the EU’s FTA negotiations.[11] In his critique of EU trade policy, Ambassador Lighthizer claimed that the EU now has 77 different free trade agreements that offer tariff rates lower than those that result from the “most favored nation” rules of the World Trade Organization. The EU does indeed have a variety of trade agreements, but many of them do not meet the GATT Article XXIV standard. The EU has signed 39 FTAs that do meet that standard. For the most part, the other “Partnership and Cooperation” agreements are limited in scope but they do provide a general framework for trade.[12]

Many countries bear the responsibility for the failure over the past twenty years to conclude multilateral trade negotiations within the framework of the WTO. That absence of multilateral trade negotiations opened the door to the proliferation of FTAs, which have the potential to divert trade from third countries to producers in the FTA member nations. The Trump Administration’s rejection of multilateral agreements, its imposition of protective trade barriers, and its concentration on bilateral agreements did nothing to forestall the negotiation by other nations of FTAs that will hamper U.S. exports to those markets.

Guy Erb is a former U.S. trade policy official and investment banker, with experience in financial and trade advisory services and international organizations.

Scott Sommers is a Consultant with Berkeley Research Group and an incoming PhD student in Economics at the University of Minnesota.

[1] “Fact Sheet on U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement.” United States Trade Representative, 25 Sept. 2019, ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/fact-sheets/2019/september/fact-sheet-us-japan-trade-agreement.

[2] www.USTR.gov, accessed June 23, 2020.

[3] “Bad News for U.S.-EU Talks: What Lighthizer has to Say,” https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-trade/2020/06/10/oecd-global-economy-on-tightrope-walk-to-recovery-788393. Accessed June 6, 2020.

[4] “April Deadline Looms over Kenya Talks,” https://politico.com/morningtrade Accessed July 9, 2020.

[5] Swanson, Ana. “Trump Lifts Metal Tariffs and Delays Auto Levies, Limiting Global Trade Fight.” The New York Times, 17 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/us/politics/china-auto-tariffs-donald-trump.html.

[6] “Pompeo says U.S. ready to team up on China, but E.U. eyes a post-Trump world,” Politico, 25 May 2020,

https://www.politico.eu/article/pompeo-says-us-ready-to-team-up-on-china-but-eu-eyes-a-post-trump-world. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/pompeo-says-us-ready-to-team-up-on-china-but-eu-eyes-a-post-trump-world-340103

[7] Table 7, Receipts and Outlays of the U.S. Government by Month.  U.S. Department of the Treasury Monthly Treasury Statement Reports, FY 2017-2019. https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/mts/previous.html

[8] Charles, Dan. “Farmers Got Billions From Taxpayers In 2019, And Hardly Anyone Objected.” NPR, NPR, 31 Dec. 2019, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/farmers-got-billions-from-taxpayers-in-2019-and-hardly-anyone-objected.

[9] Leary, Alex. “Trump Establishes Payment Program to Help Lobster Industry.” The Wall Street Journal, 25 June 2020, www.wsj.com/articles/trump-establishes-payment-program-to-help-lobster-industry-11593044444.

[10] “Losing Ground: The United States, Free Trade Areas, and the World Trade Organization,” WITA, America’s Trade Policy, http://americastradepolicy.com/losing-ground-the-united-states-free-trade-areas-and-the-world-trade-organization/#.WusNVDbrtjV.

[11] “Bad News for U.S.-EU Talks: What Lighthizer Has to Say,” https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-trade/2020/06/10/oecd-global-economy-on-tightrope-walk-to-recovery-788393. Accessed June 6, 2020.

[12] “European Commission Directorate-General for Trade.” Negotiations and Agreements – Trade – European Commission, European Union, 12 May 2020, ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/negotiations-and-agreements/.

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The WTO has two key functions. One is legislative — drawing up new rules on trade in response to economic changes over time through negotiations among the member countries. The other is a judicial — dispute settlement procedures to judge whether member states are following its rules when a trade dispute crops up and to call on violators to correct their behavior.

What’s going in the rule-making negotiations at the WTO? The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade governed goods trade. The Uruguay round negotiations under GATT, which started in 1986 and were concluded in 1993, strengthened rules on agricultural and textile trade — which had been insufficient — and made new rules on services trade and intellectual property rights, areas that had previously not been covered. Out of this the WTO was born.

Under the WTO, the Doha round negotiations started in 2001 aiming at further liberalization. But antagonism between the developed and developing countries brought the talks to a virtual halt in 2011. Although there was a little progress, the talks produced no great changes to the WTO rules agreed on in the Uruguay round talks. Rules that were adopted 27 years ago are still applied without change today. The further liberalization of goods and services trade remains deadlocked and the rules are not attuned to new forms of trade, including e-commerce.

The interests of developed and developing countries also collided during the GATT talks. Brazil and India opposed the launch of the Uruguay round itself as they objected to liberalizing services trade where they lacked competitiveness. The developed countries on their part could not align their policies with each other. The European Union was negative about including agriculture, its cornerstone industry, in the agenda of the talks. The Uruguay round finally started four years after it was proposed by the United States.

A big factor behind the U.S. call for launching the talks was the EU’s agricultural policy, especially its export subsidies that led to lower prices in international markets. The U.S. wanted to introduce regulations in this area. The dispute settlement procedures under GATT were so inadequate that even if the U.S. won the dispute, it could not impose its will on the EU.

What determined the course of the Uruguay Round talks was indeed the agricultural dispute between the U.S. and the EU. Little progress was made as the agricultural issue hijacked the talks, which began in 1986. It was as late as the end of 1992 that the U.S. and the EU struck an agreement on agricultural subsidies, and the talks were concluded the following year.

In the Doha round of the WTO talks, the U.S. and the EU thought that if they could agree on agricultural trade, the whole talks would be successfully wrapped up. Immediately before a ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico in September 2003 — two years after the start of the talks — the two parties agreed to put a ceiling of 100 percent on tariffs on agricultural imports. But the developing countries led by Brazil, China and India called on the developed countries to drastically reduce their agricultural subsidies. Thus the Cancun conference broke down without an agreement.

In the Uruguay round, the U.S., the EU, Japan and Canada (Australia replaced Canada on agricultural trade) negotiated first. The agreement among the four parties was then forwarded to other participants — first to seven countries, then 13 and next to 21 nations — to reach a final accord. In the Doha round, developing countries objected to such a negotiation method. It should be noted, however, that it is democratic to make a decision in a conference of large numbers of countries, but it’s quite difficult to reach a consensus this way.

What influenced the course of the Doha round talks was that China joined the WTO beginning with this round. The U.S. and the EU began to be pushed back by the opinions of the developing countries joined by China, which quickly went on to become the world’s second-largest economy. Under this situation the Doha round drifted. It is now almost impossible to establish new trade rules under the WTO.

On the other hand, dispute settlement procedures were much strengthened under the WTO compared with those under GATT and have functioned well in the absence of new rules. But since the old rules remain in force, moves to compensate for the lack of new rules through interpretation have become noticeable. New interpretations have been made, as if to create new laws. Cases also have arisen in which interpretations made by legal experts in accordance with the text of rules do not agree with the intention of the countries that took part in the negotiations. It may be unavoidable to some extent that documents produced by negotiators for the sake of political settlements and compromise in adjusting conflicting interests of various countries are interpreted by legal experts differently from the intentions of the original negotiators.

The U.S. has begun to feel frustrated that the conclusions it desires are not reached due to that kind of judgment by legal experts. It is also unhappy that it takes too long before final conclusions are reached. It has refused to appoint a member of the dispute settlement body. While at least three members are necessary, there is currently only one. Thus the WTO’s judiciary function has also effectively ground to a halt.

Since the WTO is unable to establish new rules, nations have come to explore multilateral free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The U.S. under the administration of President Barack Obama initiated the TPP talks. Although it was widely believed that TPP was a mechanism designed to exclude China, the Obama administration’s goal was the opposite. First, high-level rules on trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region are formulated in the TPP bodog online casino negotiations without China. Since non-participation in a large-scale free trade agreement like the TPP will bring disadvantages, more and more countries will join. Eventually China will have no other choice but to join the TPP and follow its rules. The Obama administration intended the TPP as a mechanism to include, not exclude, China.

U.S. President Donald Trump did not understand this and withdrew the U.S. from the TPP. However, all the things that the Trump administration has demanded of China in the trade war — protection of intellectual property rights, including prevention of counterfeit products; a ban on forced technology transfer in making investment and ensuring the same competitive conditions for state-owned companies and foreign firms — were covered by the TPP.

China has indeed started to show interest in the TPP, as shown by Premier Li Keqiang’s recent positive remarks about it. It appears that the Chinese government has approached the members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

China has a sense of rivalry against the U.S. Because of this, Beijing is rushing to wrap up the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership talks with Japan, South Korea, ASEAN members and others even without India, which has indicated it is leaving the RCEP talks. Some Chinese say they want to expedite reform of its state-owned enterprises by joining the TPP — to use external pressure for domestic reforms.

But if China is going to join the TPP now, Beijing will mostly likely demand significant exemption from the rules on investments and state-owned enterprises. In that case, Chinese participation in the TPP could result in the opposite of what the Obama administration intended.

If China announces its wish to join the TPP, Japan will find it hard to reject the bid. But China’s relations with Australia, another key member of the CPTPP, are rapidly deteriorating after Beijing retaliated against Canberra’s call for an independent investigation into the origin of COVID-19 by curbing the imports of Australian beef and imposing punitive tariffs on Australian barley. Given that Australia is also seeking closer ties with India, it seems unlikely that China will enter negotiations to join the TPP anytime soon.

On the other hand, China’s interest in the TPP, which, coupled with the conclusion of the RCEP talks, will increase the Chinese presence in the Asia and Pacific region and may raise the chances of the U.S. returning to the TPP if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who served as vice president in the Obama administration, wins the U.S. presidential election in November. Britain is also considering participation in the TPP. The TPP may once again gain attention as a multilateral agreement that complements the WTO.

Kazuhito Yamashita is research director of Canon Institute for Global Studies and a senior fellow of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and industry.

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A chorus of ‘re’-themed supply chain buzzwords—resiliency, redundancy, reshoring, restructuring, and regionalization, to name a few—is music to the ears of White House protectionists, who launched the trade war and who think China’s global manufacturing role is long overdue for revision. U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy of reducing the United States’ trade deficits and rejuvenating the U.S. economy stems from a nationalist view of supply chains. In this vein, Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro signaled the country’s $2 trillion in spending on stimulus packages in part aims to bring more manufacturing jobs back to American shores.

Though the coronavirus’s impact on supply networks could change the game, recently released trade data show the trade war’s early impact on the world’s two largest economies and the future of global commerce. Paradoxically, the results are largely the opposite of what the White House has been counting on. Tariffs have produced no real improvement in the United States’ underlying trade balance, while China’s trade surplus has increased and its export markets have become more diversified.

SIGNIFICANT COSTS WITHOUT REAL IMPROVEMENT IN U.S. TRADE BALANCE

Trump’s reduction of the bilateral trade deficit with China was quite costly, with a significant contraction in economic activity and an inadvertent increase in China’s overall trade surplus. And, if not for a reduction in oil imports, the United States’ trade deficit actually would have widened—calling into question the logic of a protectionist strategy designed to improve the country’s trade balance.

Overall U.S. merchandise imports contracted by $44.3 billion in 2019 compared with 2018 (see figure 1). A sharp drop in imports from China drove the decline, with tariffs in place on about $370 billion in U.S.-bound Chinese goods. U.S. imports from China fell by $87.3 billion year-on-year. This is the largest annual decline in U.S. imports from any trade partner, excluding the year of the 2009 financial crisis.

Yet imports from China only fell by 16 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year—a testament to the difficulty of shifting trade relationships in the short run. In fact, the reported data likely overstate the true decline. One major reason is transshipment, when traded goods have a layover in a third country en route from where they were manufactured to their final destination. This practice is sometimes used to sidestep tariffs. Such a tactic can cause U.S. customs officials to classify goods as coming from intermediary trade partners, such as Vietnam or Mexico, when in reality they are still coming from China.

WHO BENEFITS FROM THE U.S TARIFFS?

Regardless, a drop in imports from China only actually reduces U.S. reliance on China if companies manage to find viable substitutes. But last year, the United States was not able to fully meet the need for alternatives to Chinese merchandise. Strong overall GDP growth in 2019 suggests that total imports would likely have increased without tariffs.

In the short term, other countries that already make products affected by U.S. tariffs on China are most likely to benefit. Instead of buying from China, U.S. companies are looking to buy similar products from countries that are not impacted by the tariffs. In Asia, the undisputed winner is Vietnam, whose exports to the United States rose by 35 percent, or $17.5 billion. Another standout, Taiwan, used its long-standing comparative advantage in hardware components to benefit from trade diversion.

Europe and Mexico filled in much of the gap, as U.S. imports from these economies rose by $31.2 billion and $11.6 billion, respectively (see figure 1). Also noteworthy, imports from Venezuela and the Middle East plummeted as a result of U.S. sanctions and increased energy self-sufficiency.

On the exports side, the United States was hurt by depressed demand due to retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and others in response to U.S. duties on steel and aluminum. Rather than increasing the competitiveness of U.S. producers, tariffs instead led to a net decline of $23.1 billion in exports.

Moreover, despite Trump’s vision of a “blue collar boom,” U.S. domestic manufacturing did not pick up the slack. Instead, the industrial production index experienced a year-on-year decline for the first time since 2015 in response to supply chain interruptions and tariff-induced increases in production costs. This yielded an overall welfare loss in the form of forgone consumption due to higher prices for retailers and households, contradicting the president’s persistent claim that China pays for the tariffs.

CHINA COMES OUT AHEAD

How did China respond? Unsurprisingly, exports to the United States and Hong Kong—an intermediary hub—declined significantly as a result of tariffs (see figure 2). However, China was able to compensate by ramping up sales to nearly everyone else, so much so that exports contracted by the relatively small amount of just $2.8 billion on net.

Chinese exports to Southeast Asia alone rose by $38.5 billion, largely due to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which overtook the United States as China’s second-largest trading partner. Exports also increased to Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, regions where China has sought to deepen economic ties under its Belt and Road Initiative. 

Chinese imports from the United States fell by $33 billion in 2019 due to retaliatory tariffs. And because of the sharp decline in exports of processed manufactured goods to the United States, China further cut back on imported components from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This led to a huge decline in China’s total imports—resulting in an improvement in the country’s overall trade balance of over $60 billion last year despite the trade war. These ripple effects underscore the fact that, contrary to the misguided view of the White House, trade is a multilateral phenomenon, not a bilateral one.

FUTURE SUPPLY CHAIN IMPACTS IN THREE STAGES

In 2019, the United States’ share of Chinese imports and exports fell to a twenty-seven-year low. Many observers agree that U.S.-China trade tensions have made some degree of decoupling all but inevitable. The pandemic only adds to that likelihood. The eroding phase one trade agreement, even if miraculously fulfilled, would do little to reverse that. But while governments can prod along decoupling, the outcomes will ultimately come down to the commercial decisions that companies make. The impact of these decisions on global supply chains will take years to fully materialize, in potentially unexpected ways.

In the short run, manufacturers will continue to divert trade and search for temporary tariff-dodging workarounds such as transshipment and adjusting suppliers. In the medium run, manufacturers will scale production and reallocate personnel at preexisting facilities. Only in the long run can significant decoupling take place, given the large upfront costs and requisite advance planning.

Uncertainty in the policy environment due to the increasingly unstable U.S.-China relationship complicates major investment decisions, and the pandemic only compounds this risk. But the principle underpinning supply chains based on comparative advantage—a country’s ability to produce certain goods and services more efficiently and cheaply than its competitors—remains powerful. This encourages high-skill products to be produced in developed economies, and more labor-intensive assembly activities to take place in countries with lower wages. Protective tariffs work against this free-market principle by shifting incentives toward political rather than commercial objectives.

In truth, China’s dominance in global manufacturing has been gradually waning since its peak in 2015, due to structural shifts in the Chinese economy, such as its continued graduation from low-skill manufacturing such as clothing and textiles, the decline of China’s role as a location for final assembly, and rebalancing toward consumption and services, which are less trade-intensive than capital investment. The trade war and pandemic-induced supply chain shifts only further accelerate these trends.

Ironically, offshoring has come full circle. Chinese firms are already moving to lower-cost venues that better serve the U.S. market—as exemplified by Chinese electronics manufacturer Hisense’s choice to double investment in its electronics plant in Mexico. The White House’s protectionist policies, which threaten to escalate ahead of the November 2020 elections, may be shaking up supply chains. But Trump’s goal of reducing trade deficits and weakening China’s economic prospects is yet unrealized.

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            The plan, as discussed in recent weeks, would upend the current tariff structure by attacking the Most Favored Nation principle at the heart of the multilateral trading system.

            The plan’s delay is partially due to the current preoccupation with battling the pandemic and its economic fallout. But some administration officials also recognize that it could cause further economic disruption that would not help President Trump’s reelection campaign.

            Some sources say that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow seem to have pushed back against the tariff approach advocated by Assistant to the President Peter Navarro.

            In addition, there seems to be very little political value in a technical tariff issue for the reelection campaign of President Trump.  

            It is therefore unlikely that U.S. officials will announce a massive tariff redo at the June meeting of the G7, as once thought. But the plan could come roaring back to life later, particularly if President Trump is reelected to a second term.

            It is an open question whether it would be as broad as now discussed or scaled back to certain countries’ tariffs. If the U.S. focuses only on certain tariffs in a few countries as unreasonable trade barriers, it could use Section 301 to pressure them to lower these.

            Section 301 authorizes the President to enter into binding agreements to eliminate an act, policy or practice that the U.S. considers unreasonable and burdening U.S. commerce.

            The Administration has been weighing a proposal by Navarro that foresees the U.S. breaking its tariffs bound in the WTO and now applied across the board based on the MFN principle. This seems aimed at pressuring foreign countries to lower their tariffs or face higher U.S. tariffs reciprocal to theirs.

            The tariff reset plan was first reported by Bloomberg News in mid-February, and USTR stated at the time that there are no plans “at this time” to raise WTO bound tariffs.

            Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) responded to those reports by saying that the administration cannot change bound tariff rates without congressional approval.

            He also announced last month that he plans to hold a hearing on the Trump administration’s approach to the WTO in the near term, but without specifying a date. Such a hearing, when it finally takes place, may be a venue for members to explain to Trump officials the trade offs made in the Uruguay Round in favor of the U.S. that underlie the current tariff schedule.

            Congress could emerge as an obstacle to the tariff reset given that the U.S. Constitution gives it the ultimate authority over trade. In addition, it seems that many members back the administration on its blockage of the WTO Appellate Body, but do not want to see it destroy the institution altogether. 

            But it remains an open question whether congressional Republicans have the will to stop the administration on a drastic tariff reset. That would be in contrast to the acquiescence they have shown in the past to Trump’s controversial trade actions.

            It could be argued that a wholesale breaking of U.S. tariffs and a renegotiation is a multilateral issue that would fall under the fast-track law which gives Congress the ultimate approval over trade agreements.

            That law expires in June of next year, and any administration would have to notify its intent to enter into an agreement subject to fast-track 90 days before then, which would be next April.

            U.S. trade law gives a President the power to raise tariffs in certain circumstances and with certain limitations. Section 125 of the 1974 Trade Act allows a president to raise duties after the U.S. withdrawal, suspension or modification of U.S. obligations under a trade agreement.

            But this provision does not give the President carte blanche to increase tariffs. Section 125 (c) specifies that the duties cannot be higher than 50% ad valorem above the Column 2 rate in effect on January 1, 1975, or 20% above the applied rate in effect on that date, whichever is higher.

            According to Warren Maruyama, partner at the law firm of Hogan Lovells, this could amount to a significant increase. “Since Column 2 was our Smoot-Hawley rate, which by 1975 only applied to Communist/Non-Market economies, it means he could likely jack the rates to 100-110% on average,” Maruyama said.

            He noted that if the president wants to negotiate a new trade agreement that would involve duties higher than 50 percent ad valorem above the 1975 Column 2 rate, it would be subject to fast-track procedures. He emphasized that “there wouldn’t be much point in that, since a 100-110% duty would shut down trade and eliminate any need to go higher if the purpose is to pressure the other country.”

            Section 125 also stipulates that existing U.S. tariffs should “normally” stay in place for one year after the termination of an agreement. This is to guard against the potentially disruptive economic effects of sudden tariff increases and gives markets time to adjust. But the law specifically allows the president to increase tariffs in less than one year subject to some congressional notification requirements.

            The President’s Trade Policy Agenda 2020 sent to Congress on Feb. 28, complains about tariff discrepancies but offers no remedy. It notes that there is “no sunset clause or meaningful mechanism to allow the United States and other Members to address enormous differences” in tariffs, citing India and Brazil as examples.

            The trade policy agenda emphasizes that just because the U.S. accepted tariff disparities many years ago, when economic and geopolitical conditions were very different, it should not be expected to tolerate them “in perpetuity.”

            The current tariffs are largely the result of the Uruguay Round of negotiations, which formally ended in April 1994. On market access, the U.S. aimed at cutting tariffs for industrial goods by roughly one-third, according to a former U.S. negotiator. It also asked that trading partners bind their rates, which meant they could not be jacked up without offering affected trading partners some compensation.

            The President’s trade agenda fails to mention that the tariffs are the result of various trade offs in the Uruguay Round, some of which were difficult for developing countries. This includes the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that established new obligations for protecting patents, trademarks and copyrights.            The U.S. also successfully pushed for the General Agreement on Trade In Services, which laid out new rules for this sector.

            But the U.S. also made concessions in the Uruguay Round to developing countries. For example, it agreed to the phaseout of the Multi Fiber Arrangement, which set quotas on textile and apparel trade but did not lower high tariffs in that sector.  

            The agenda also emphasizes that high tariff bindings are one of several manifestations of the special and differential treatment that developing countries can claim in the WTO. It criticizes “advanced economies” such as China, India, South Africa and Turkey for insisting that they are entitled to special and differential treatment. 

            When railing against foreign tariffs, President Trump has frequently cited the discrepancy in U.S. and EU tariffs rates on cars, which are 2.5 and 10 percent respectively. But he somehow fails to mention that the U.S. tariff on light trucks is 25 percent, and was imposed as a result of an earlier trade dispute over U.S. chicken exports to France and Germany in 1963.

            Trump view of the U.S. as a low tariff country also fails to take into account the tariff peaks in the U.S. tariff schedule on such items as footwear, apparel, and glass ware. In addition, the Uruguay Round implementing legislation gives special protection from tariff cuts to import-sensitive agriculture goods.  

             Insisting on reciprocal tariffs would mean the U.S. would destroy the MFN principle at the core of the multilateral trading system. Doing so as the largest economy in the world would be a devastating blow to the WTO as it stands now, trade experts say.

            It is clear that the MFN principle has already been hollowed out since the Uruguay Round by the number and sheer breadth of regional and bilateral free trade agreements that have proliferated since then. Under the rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,  trading partners can offer better than WTO market access in free trade agreements that cover substantially all trade.

            The Navarro approach would also pose a number of significant logistical challenges in terms of negotiations and application.

            Traditionally, tariff renegotiations have been carried out under Article 28 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Its rules obligate the trading partner seeking the change to offer compensation to countries with which the initial tariff was negotiated and those that have a “principal” supply interest. If trading partners fail to reach a deal on compensation, the affected party can retaliate within six months.

            If the U.S. pursued a massive Article 28 negotiation for all its tariff lines, it would almost certainly fail, a number of sources said. 

            In the past,  Article 28 has been invoked when the European Union expanded to new members who had to increase their tariffs to the level of the Common External Tariffs. The United Kingdom is now engaged in Article 28 tariff renegotiations but these pale in comparison to the number of tariff lines that would be involved in a U.S. negotiation, experts say.

            If carried out fully, a reciprocal approach would require different tariff schedules for different trading partners on a given product. Even with additional customs officers, this would be a tough system to manage.  

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In the last two years, Trump’s policy has forced China to divert the sales of these products—including protective gear for doctors and nurses and high-tech equipment to monitor patients—from the United States to other markets, and now the US medical establishment faces looming trouble importing these necessities from other countries, which may be hoarding them to meet their own health crises.

To deal with this issue, the Trump administration quietly announced on March 10 and 12, 2020, that it would temporarily reduce some tariffs imposed on Chinese products to treat the coronavirus pandemic. But those actions, which effectively acknowledged that trade wars can endanger public health, covered only a handful of urgently needed products.

Trump’s tariffs had been slapped on nearly $5 billion of US imports of medical goods from China, about 26 percent of all medical goods imported from all countries. Now that there are potential supply shortages globally, the US health crisis demands that the administration comprehensively and permanently reverse these policies of self-harm.

This calamity was hardly unforeseen. In August 2018, the Trump administration’s US Trade Representative convened a hearing to ask the public whether it should impose tariffs on such products. Matt Rowan, president of the bodog poker review Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA), warned against the impact that Trump’s tariffs would have on the American health sector.

“These products are essential to protecting healthcare providers and their patients every single day,” he said with shocking prescience. “The healthcare products on the proposed list are used widely throughout healthcare settings and are a critical component of our nation’s response to public health emergencies.”

His warnings, echoed by many others over the next year, went unheeded. Trump’s reversal earlier in March served as an implicit indictment of his administration’s own policy.

But a potential for crisis is not limited to the unnecessary costs and health equipment bottlenecks that Trump’s trade war with China has created. His continued mistreatment of many trading partners, imposition of tariffs and threats of tariffs on their exports, may make it difficult now to get new sources of supplies. Even allies are now lashing out and restricting the flow of medical equipment outside of their borders, including to the United States.

President Trump should immediately admit to the problem his policies have created. His administration should permanently and comprehensively suspend the trade war tariffs on critical medical products from China. And with its former allies, the administration should reverse its isolationist approach and reinvigorate the international cooperation that had formed the basis of US policy for over 70 years.

To avoid even worse tragedies to come, the world needs American leadership now more than ever.

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Among the many products that industry experts have identified as important for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the most important include personal protective equipment, masks, sterile gloves, and goggles that doctors, nurses, and first responders wear to limit the spread of infectious disease. Also critical is disposable equipment such as hospital gowns, surgical drapes, as well as thermometers and breathing masks, which patients require during a hospital visit.

Finally, relatively high-tech medical equipment—including CT systems, ultrasound systems, patient monitors, and X-ray devices—is used to diagnose and treat patients suffering from the disease. Americans imported about $22 billion of such products from the world in 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19.

Before Trump began the trade war in 2018, US tariffs on imports of most of these products were fairly low. For half of the products imported, the US tariff was even zero. A handful faced nuisance tariffs of less than 4.5 percent, and disposable and other medical headwear had tariffs of 6 to 8 percent (see appendix table at the end of the blog).

Overall, low US tariffs enabled American hospitals and patients to access a plentiful supply of these products at the highest quality and lowest price, including from China: Before the trade war, the United States imported $5 billion of these goods from China, or about 26 percent of US imports of such products at the time.

TRUMP’S TRADE WAR TARIFFS ON CHINA CONSIDERABLY CUT US IMPORTS OF SOME MEDICAL PRODUCTS FROM THERE

President Trump began his trade war with China in early 2018. Over the next two years, he raised US tariffs ranging from 15 to 25 percent on $360 billion, or two-thirds, worth of what Americans buy from China. These tariffs on China were imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

The Trump administration’s tariffs hit hard many medical products now needed to treat COVID-19. Over time, Trump brought more of such products into the firing lines of his trade war, despite additional warnings to the administration of the potential consequences. As Linda O’Neill, also of HIDA, cautioned in her June 2019 testimony on Section 301 tariffs: “Tariffs on critical health care products put a risk to our nation’s public health preparedness.”

Trump’s tariffs resulted in a sharp decline in US imports from China of many of these critical products between 2017 and 2019 (figure 1). As the American economy grew, demand for health care services for America’s aging population continued to increase, and US demand for imports of these products from the rest of the world overall grew at over 20 percent. The disruption to trade with China was dramatic.

In the aggregate, US imports of Chinese medical products hit with 10 to 25 percent US tariffs beginning in 2018 fell by 16 percent, or nearly $200 million, between 2017 and 2019. At the same time, US imports of these products from the rest of the world increased by 23 percent. The differences were especially large in CT systems, patient monitors and pulse oximeters, and certain types of disposable medical headwear.

In September 2019, Trump hit even more medical products from China with 15 percent tariffs. US imports of these products from the rest of the world also grew 23 percent between 2017 and 2019, while US import growth from China fell to only 13 percent. The smaller negative effect on these products in 2019 is likely due to the US tariffs being at a lower rate (15 percent, not 25 percent) and only being in effect for four months.

Overall, Trump’s tariffs imposed hardship on American medical care purchasers and providers.

In many instances, Americans had no choice but to continue to buy from China, which meant paying an additional cost due to the tariff. Medical equipment cannot instantaneously sprout up at another plant in some other country. American patients demand the safety that comes through Food and Drug Administration (FDA) testing and certification. This process ensures manufacturing facilities do not roll out defective health care equipment.

As Lara Simmons of Medline Industries had explained to the administration in June 2019, “Finding alternative sources of supply for these products to minimize the cost impact of the duties is not a viable option in the near or medium term…. Starting production in the U.S. or any third country would be a time consuming and expensive process due to the FDA regulatory procedure that is required for these products.”

She alerted the administration to the timeline of the tariffs’ impact on US health care preparedness: “This process can take more than two years.” Even for American consumers who tried to switch to non-Chinese suppliers, doing so would come at a cost. Companies and hospitals would need to shift resources to their procurement divisions to search for new manufactures.

New products would need to be tested to ensure interoperability and that they met the same quality standards as the old ones that Trump’s tariffs were forcing them to abandon. These financial resources instead could have been spent on patient care or cutting costs.

Finally, America’s own manufacturers of hospital equipment also faced higher costs because of Trump’s tariffs on other products—specifically, the many parts and components. Trump’s 25 percent tariffs remain on over $100 billion of intermediate inputs from China.

Failing to heed the warnings, Trump’s tariffs have disrupted the American health care system’s access to medical products, just when they are needed the most in 2020.

To view the full blog, click here.

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