Washington. As the Trump administration embarks on a 13th round of trade talks with China, the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) is urging US trade negotiators to take a hard line with Beijing.
CPA believes there are important reasons why the US should hold firm unless Beijing makes substantial concessions.
[1] China’s intellectual property theft and espionage continues unabated. The FBI just issued a warning about theft of “cutting-edge” research at America’s universities. And only two weeks ago, the Justice Department charged a Chinese agent with stealing national security secrets.
[2] Beijing is still engaged in human rights abuses. Earlier today, the US government blacklisted 28 Chinese organizations involved in abuses against ethnic Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province. And this week, the US sanctioned several of China’s tech firms for aiding human rights violations.
[3] Manufacturers are leaving China and moving to lower-cost countries. More than 50 global companies have announced plans to move production out of China. This reduces dependence on China while increasing the diversity of global production.
[4] Decoupling from China is growing US manufacturing jobs. US manufacturing employment has increased by nearly 500,000 jobs since January 2017. Part of that growth is due to tariffs reducing imports from China.
[5] Tariffs on Chinese production will expand the US economy. Forcing multinational enterprises to move production out of China lowers import costs while reshoring production to the US.
CPA recently demonstrated the benefits of a China tariff in an award-winning economics paper honored at this week’s National Association for Business Economics (NABE) conference.
Read more about decoupling the US economy from China.
