Biden’s hands may be tied on Trump’s China tariffs, trade experts say

One way Biden would depart from Trump is by consulting with allies about the best way to deal with China, said Jeff Prescott, a Biden campaign policy adviser.

Working with Europe, Japan and other allies “can bring a significant percentage of the global economy to bear” on China to curb non-market practices and to reform WTO rules, he said.

Trump still has support from many blue-collar workers in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but Biden is backed by the country’s biggest union group.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on Thursday he believes Biden would impose rules to “keep workers safe” in the pandemic, use tax incentives to encourage the reshoring of critical supply chains and deliver a major infrastructure spending drive, with strong “Buy American” requirements.

Trump, he said, “hasn’t lived up to his hype.”

Jon Lieber, U.S. managing director for the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy, said that while what Biden is proposing is a different brand of economic nationalism than Trump, “lower barriers for China would be totally inconsistent with that goal.”

Whatever the decisions on trade, Biden advisers say there is no going back to the pre-Trump trade consensus, where businesses successfully pushed U.S. governments to continually shrink trade barriers, while touting globalization.

“There’s a kind of recognition that ultimately the goal of international economic policy is not to make the world safe for multinational corporations to do business,” said Prescott. “It’s fundamentally about jobs in the United States, about the middle class at home and building our economy here.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/08/bidens-hands-may-be-tied-on-trumps-china-tariffs-trade-experts-say-.html