Trump’s rehashed promises on China risks giving Biden the upper hand
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President Donald Trump is reviving his 2016 campaign playbook on attacking China, but running as the incumbent means defending a record of only limited success in rewriting the economic relationship with Beijing.
Much of what the Trump team has laid out in recent weeks sounds like campaign promises made four years ago: stopping outsourcing and bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, ending dependence on China for crucial inputs and supporting companies that make things in America.
“Under my administration, we’ll end our reliance on China once and for all,” Trump said on Labor Day. “And we’ll impose tariffs on companies that desert America to create jobs in China and other countries. If they can’t do it here, then let them pay a big tax to build it someplace else and send it into our country.”
Yet, despite hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs that the US levied against China, sanctions imposed on Chinese officials and actions to restrict the Asian nation’s technology companies, the vast majority of American firms have no plans to pack up shop in China and come back to the US.
“There hasn’t been any kind of transformational shift on the part of multinational corporations away from China sourcing,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a non-partisan partnership formed by US manufacturers and the United Steelworkers. “Is 3M still making respirators in China as well as the US? Yes, they are. Does Apple have any plans to divest from China? Not that I’m aware of.”
Only about 4% of the more than 200 US manufacturers surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said they will shift any production to the US, a report showed on Wednesday. More than 75% said they do not intend to move production out of China, while 14% said they will shift some operations to other countries.
In a separate US-China Business Council survey, 87% of the more than 100 canvassed American companies said they have no plans to shift production out of the Asian nation, citing long-term confidence in that market.
‘Rampant’ cheating
While Trump’s campaign has not offered much detail on how he would bring back jobs from China in a second term, it cites other actions — such as tariffs on more than $300bn of the country’s products — as successes in dealing with what it terms “China’s rampant trade cheating.”
“The ...
Much of what the Trump team has laid out in recent weeks sounds like campaign promises made four years ago: stopping outsourcing and bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, ending dependence on China for crucial inputs and supporting companies that make things in America.
“Under my administration, we’ll end our reliance on China once and for all,” Trump said on Labor Day. “And we’ll impose tariffs on companies that desert America to create jobs in China and other countries. If they can’t do it here, then let them pay a big tax to build it someplace else and send it into our country.”
Yet, despite hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs that the US levied against China, sanctions imposed on Chinese officials and actions to restrict the Asian nation’s technology companies, the vast majority of American firms have no plans to pack up shop in China and come back to the US.
“There hasn’t been any kind of transformational shift on the part of multinational corporations away from China sourcing,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a non-partisan partnership formed by US manufacturers and the United Steelworkers. “Is 3M still making respirators in China as well as the US? Yes, they are. Does Apple have any plans to divest from China? Not that I’m aware of.”
Only about 4% of the more than 200 US manufacturers surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said they will shift any production to the US, a report showed on Wednesday. More than 75% said they do not intend to move production out of China, while 14% said they will shift some operations to other countries.
In a separate US-China Business Council survey, 87% of the more than 100 canvassed American companies said they have no plans to shift production out of the Asian nation, citing long-term confidence in that market.
‘Rampant’ cheating
While Trump’s campaign has not offered much detail on how he would bring back jobs from China in a second term, it cites other actions — such as tariffs on more than $300bn of the country’s products — as successes in dealing with what it terms “China’s rampant trade cheating.”
“The ...