President Trump knocked over several apple carts when he signed an order imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
[Curtis Ellis | March 9, 2018 | WND]
He upended decades of free-trade dogma that prevailed in Washington whatever party held power.
He rejected the ivory tower theories that created the economic nightmare that has destroyed the American middle class.
When President Trump appeared in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with the union men and women who make aluminum and steel, he remade the GOP into Trump’s party of working people, ending the Democrats’ claim to that banner.
And he told the geopolitical strategists at the State Department they would no longer sacrifice jobs and industries in the American heartland to buy votes in the U.N or basing rights on the other side of the world.
President Trump’s 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum is the first step in rewriting the rules of global trade. The era of $800 billion annual trade deficits with the rest of the world is over.
The master strategists of the State Department used trade as an aid to build up countries around the world, allowing them duty-free access to our consumer market even as they protected their own home market from our imports.
The suits and geniuses told us that as these countries grew more prosperous, they would become more democratic and would be our allies. China proved them spectacularly wrong.
In response to the utopian platitudes of the globalists promising universal peace through free trade, President Trump invokes Matthew: I came not to send peace, but a sword. We will stand up for America First.
He also invokes Luke: we will do unto others as they do unto us. Our foreign trade policy will be guided by the Golden Rule. The goal is balanced trade.
If a country levies a 25 percent duty on imports from America, we will levy a 25 percent duty on their goods coming into our country.
An American car going to China pays 25 percent import duty. A Chinese car coming to the United States only pays 2.5 percent duty, a tenfold difference.
While China has been the most notorious cheater, flagrantly violating every agreement it made when we let it join the World Trade Organization, China is not the only cheater.
India has benefited most from a trade policy hatched in the 1970s to promote global development.
We opened our market to Indian businesses, allowing them to sell, tariff-free, everything from textiles, gems and jewelry to manhole covers. India’s products were more attractive to American consumers than similar products made by manufacturers in other countries and even in America.
But in return, India’s government has been working overtime to keep American products and businesses out.
Harley Davidson, one of the most iconic American companies, is subject to a 100 percent tax on its bikes in India. Doubling the price of a Harley means Indians drive Indian and Japanese motorcycles, not American. Agricultural goods don’t fare any better. India uses protectionist regulations to effectively ban American dairy, wheat and barley.
As a result of this one-way policy, the United States has a nearly$30 billion trade deficit with India.
President Trump promises our trade with allies will be reciprocal: countries receiving access to our market must provide fair access to their markets.
India will be an important ally in meeting China’s challenge to America’s economic and military pre-eminence. But as President Trump made clear, it will have to obey the Golden Rule of trade.
