“We are seeing a new consensus on trade. A lot of credit goes to President Trump and a lot of it goes to a bunch of working class Democrats,” Robert Lighthizer said at the first-ever Prosperity Summit.
Rep. Adrian Smith of the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee says the Generalized System of Preferences will be renewed, with retroactive tariff refunds worth billions.
An alarming new report from Horizon Advisory details China’s distortion of the global solar industry and how that threatens the national and economic security of the United States as it “risks making the United States dependent, and dependent on an adversary, for a strategic, future energy source.”
The annual trade deficit has fallen. Yet for 2023, our trade deficit of $773 billion was once again the world’s largest. Our goods deficit, at $1.06 trillion, exceeded a trillion dollars for the third year in a row.
China recently became the world’s largest car exporter, and by all accounts their global market share will keep expanding. One silver lining, at least, is that more and more leaders are figuring out that absent tariff increases, our nation will become a slave to foreign nations that do prioritize production.
The Wall Street Journal has started 2024 bemoaning tariffs. They are for losers, the WSJ Inside View columnist Andy Kessler wrote in December, ending 2023 with a taste of what is expected to come this year, an election year.