Given our struggling businesses and the shrinking pocketbooks of our consumers, is this a good time for a trade war? Despite Biden running
against Trump’s China tariffs in 2016, they are good now, since a barely-cognitive care-home resident thinks so. Lost in the chatter yesterday about Biden’s economic flip-flopping was the fact these are
more sanctions. Aljazeera ran the story yesterday under the headline, “
Biden slaps new tariffs on Chinese imports, ratcheting trade war.”
The story’s sub-headline hilariously added, “
The US president said China’s financial support for its businesses was ‘cheating’ and not competition.” Biden is talking about, don’t laugh, government subsidies:
The Democratic president said on Tuesday that Chinese government subsidies ensure the nation’s companies do not have to turn a profit, giving them an unfair advantage in global trade.
There’s just too much material here. Biden meant unfair govnerment subsidies like
this one, mentioned in
an AIP article from late March:
Oh wait!
Sorry! That’s one of
our many subsidies. Whoops. When
we do it, It’s not unfair and not anticompetitive and definitely doesn’t give us any advantage. Don’t try to reason that out, you could hurt yourself.
I could go on. Biden’s hypocrisy knows no bounds, and so forth. He’s doing exactly what he criticized Trump for during the last election cycle, and he’s doing exactly what the United States government has made into a national pastime for the well-connected. But that’s not the real story.
The real story is that the sanctions war against China just shifted into the highest gear. They skipped all the intermediate gears. No ramping up or anything. It’s economic nuclear war. The new ‘tariffs’ affect an estimated eighteen billion in annual imported Chinese goods like steel, aluminium, semiconductors, electric vehicles, critical minerals, solar cells and for some reason, cranes.
And it’s not just any little warning tariff, either. Biden has
quadrupled import duties on Chinese electric vehicles — a jump of more than 100% — and doubled duties on semiconductor tariffs — up 50%.
Why do I call it
economic war? Well, for one thing it was right there, in the Aljazeera article:
China immediately promised retaliation. Its Ministry of Commerce said Beijing was opposed to the tariff hikes by the United States and would take measures to defend its interests.
For another thing, they
told us this would happen, not even three weeks ago.
Headline from Politico, April 26th:
But even though a child could connect these dots, useless corporate media is dutifully reporting the fake Biden narrative, that the tariffs are somehow intended to help the U.S.’s economy, instead of admitting the truth:
this is part of the Ukraine war. Sanctions catastrophically failed against Russia — which is why they’re not calling the tariffs ‘sanctions’ this time — and Biden blames
China.
As far as I can tell, Biden and his neocons think their Russia sanctions would have worked if it weren’t for those meddling Chinese. So it’s on, like Donkey Kong, or Godzilla, or whatever fake-looking monster the Chinese have these days.
Prepare for even more inflation as cheaper Chinese goods flee U.S. markets, and as Captain Ahab, I mean Biden, keeps chasing his white Ukrainian whale. Call me Ishmael.
No more spicy cheddar biscuits or free refills as Bidenomics swirls the drain; Biden's China tariffs are disguised Ukraine war sanctions; the Trump Trial ends phase one on a low note; and more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Just over six years ago, when Donald Trump first announced
tariffs on Chinese goods, it was as if a bomb had gone off. American stocks fell sharply at the prospect of a trade war, businesses warned of blowback and economists lined up to decry the move. Such is the protectionist mood in Washington now that Joe Biden’s announcement of new measures has been met with rather less panic—even though it concerns significantly higher tariffs.
On May 14th, following a policy review, the White House decided to raise tariffs on, among other things, Chinese semiconductors and solar cells from 25% to 50%, syringes and needles from 0% to 50% and lithium-ion batteries from 7.5% to 25%. It hit electric vehicles with the biggest increase of all, quadrupling the tariff rate on
China-made electric vehicles (evs) from 25% to 100%. Lael Brainard of the National Economic Council said the actions would create “a level playing-field in industries that are vital to our future”. Yet it is American consumers who will pay the price.