Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul joined the national debate program to argue that the Trump administration is rightly fighting back against decades of trade cheating.
Less than two weeks after taking office, President Trump imposed a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods, signaling that Trump 2.0 was determined to rebalance U.S.-China trade and hold Beijing accountable for its U.S.-China Phase One Trade Agreement. It’s a big undertaking, and one that’s only just begun. But, on Tuesday, the Trump administration executed the next stage of bringing Beijing to the negotiation table with additional 10% tariffs.
Amid these opening salvos in the Trump 2.0 trade agenda, there’s been a lot of confusion about what the China tariffs will do, with plenty of panic surrounding rising consumer prices. It’s this alarm that Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul addressed in the latest episode of Open to Debate, a nationally broadcast debate program. In arguing that Trump was right to increase Chinese import tariffs, Paul went toe-to-toe with Jennifer Hillman, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Trade and International Political Economy, and Rana Mitter, the Harvard Kennedy School’s ST Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations.
As the world contemplates the implications of additional tariffs on Chinese goods and whips itself up into a frenzy, Paul highlighted that since President Donald Trump first imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in January 2018, we’ve seen U.S. jobs grow.
“And that’s not only in steel,” Paul said. “That is across the board. Our economy is larger. There’s more jobs in the larger economy. Inflation is under control. The tariffs were not a significant contributor to prices or inflation. And they can’t be because in a $30 trillion economy, they are a tiny slice of that.”
Moreover, companies are fully capable of responding to the increased cost of doing business with China, a country that has participated in egregious trade cheating, intellectual property theft, and forced technology transfers for decades.
The tariffs are working, Paul said. We know that companies are responding to the current trade action by exiting China, further insulating U.S. business from Beijing’s economic coercion—an essential goal behind the tariffs
“Our firms are not infants,” Paul said. “They can make choices about sourcing, and many of them did. They went to other countries. Some of them came back to the United States. Some of them renegotiated contracts. Some of them took lower margins. They did all of this because they’re innovative, and they have the ability to do that. And that’s what firms will do this time as well, and they will continue to de-risk from China. And that is exactly what the goal of this is.”
And, by coupling the tariffs with incentives, the U.S. can bring this valuable business back to our country, restoring valuable community-supporting manufacturing jobs. Failing to address China’s trade cheating just isn’t an option.
“There has been a trade war going on for 25 years, so we’ve sat back and taken it.” Paul said. “And we’ve taken it to the point where it’s cost lives. It’s cost livelihoods. It’s cost our national security capabilities.”
Now is the time to hold Beijing to account.