https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-panda-could-end-the-trade-war-11559507419
China gave the U.S. two giant pandas in honor of Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit—Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing. (We gifted two musk oxen. Fair trade?) China must have been trying to tell us something. “Ling” in Mandarin translates to zero, which happens to be the right percentage for tariffs. Zero, zip, nada, goose egg.
Last July, President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed to “work together toward zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.” It’s not a done deal, and autos are—wink wink—national-security threats, but there’s that big fat zero.
Tragically, the U.S.-China trade war is out of hand and both economies are slowing. I’ve lost track of 10% and 25% tariffs on $200 billion in goods, or is it $325 billion? One more round of sanctions and already-expensive iPhones will pop another $200. No one wants that. It’s time to go back to basics.
I get it. We run trade deficits with China. They make all our shoes and toys and lots of apparel and Hibachi grills. So what? You don’t like cheap sneakers? But in the next breath, we hear about intellectual-property theft and subsidies of state-owned companies and that China will soon spend double the U.S. on innovation. We hear the screams from the Mnuchin-Navarro-Lighthizer mercantilist wing of the Trump administration that “something must be done!”
So we get threats and tariffs and whispers that it’s all just a negotiating tactic to stop China’s trade abuses—the art of the trade deal. Some art—now China telecom giant Huawei’s products are banned in the U.S., causing giant disruptions for U.S. software companies and chip makers. U.S. companies are discouraged from hiring Chinese engineers. Soybean exports are curtailed. Critical rare-earth metals from China might get cut off.
Why the impasse?