In her Senate Finance Committee hearing today, USTR-nominee Katherine Tai stated, "the Biden administration itself is committed to a holistic review of China and the US-China strategy."
Good. In a new paper, I too reviewed US-China strategy.
US-China trade war average tariffs:
• US tariff on China went from 3% to 19.3%
• China's tariff on US exports went from 8% to 20.7%
Trump did get China to liberalize - just toward everyone else, not the US:
• China cut its tariff toward rest of world from 8% to 6.1%
2/
Despite the Phase One agreement, US tariffs on China remain in effect, covering $335 billion of imports from China.
US tariffs remain on a lot of intermediate inputs, raising costs to US businesses and their workers...
3/
Despite the Phase One agreement, China's tariffs technically remain in effect, covering $90 billion of imports from the United States.
If someone in China wants to import from the US, there is a separate tariff exemption process run by its Ministry of Finance... 4/
In 2018, Trump administration set up an opaque "product exclusion" process for companies to beg for an exemption from tariffs on China.
We now have estimates for how much imports they excluded (4% of tariffed products) and how much US tariff revenue was foregone ($8.3 bn)... 5/
Trade Remedies!!!
Fear not! US antidumping and countervailing duties continued on their upward trend during the Trump administration.
US antidumping duties covered 7.4% of imports from China at the end of 2016, increasing to 10.3% by end of 2020...
6/
US-China trade war tariffs: What if you throw in...
• Antidumping – the average tariff goes up (by A LOT in the US case)
• Product exclusions – the average tariff goes down a bit
7/
Oof! By the end of the Trump administration, you are left with A LOT of overlapping US tariffs on China.
I.e., many products being hit with MULTIPLE special tariffs all at once.
Take Steel: Antidumping duties! Section 232 national security tariffs!! Section 301 tariffs!!!
8/
In late 2019, China agreed to buy tens of billions of dollars of additional US exports in 2020 under Trump's Phase One deal.
That didn't happen...
9/
MANUFACTURING: Trump cast his trade war as designed to help US manufacturing.
US manufacturing exports to China had nearly doubled 2009-17. The trade war put an end to that.
And in the first year of Phase One, manufacturing continued to suffer, declining another 5%...
10/
AGRICULTURE: Amazing! It got back to 2017 levels. But Ag exports...
• ended up 18% short of the 2020 legal commitment
• FAR lower than Trump's deal (see Annex 6-1 footnote b) wanted - ie, China would “strive” to buy $5bn more per year ON TOP OF the unmet commitments...
11/
ENERGY: The commitments themselves were a puzzle
And those exports performed the worst of the three goods sectors, reaching less than 40% of the 2020 legal commitment...
12/
The paper has more, including
• export controls!
• withhold release orders!
• reclassification of Hong Kong!
Most importantly, find **ALL THE DATA** organized to conduct your own (better!!!) research and holistic review of US-China strategy.
The Inflation Reduction Act went into effect one year ago Wednesday (Aug 16, 2022). In Korea and Europe, anger quickly emerged when it seemed IRA's tax credits for electric vehicles would discriminate against their exports.
Yet US imports of EVs have boomed.
What happened? 1/5
Dec 29, 2022: Treasury clarifies that **leased** EVs qualify for tax credits under a separate (Section 45W) provision of IRA.
Tax credit eligibility under 45W does NOT require the EV be assembled in North America.
So leased EVs imported from Europe or Korea were eligible... 2/5
The result?
Leases as a share of new *S Korean assembled* EVs entering US market:
Dec 2022: 3%
...
Apr 2023: 42%
Leases as a share of new *European assembled* EVs entering US market:
The Inflation Reduction Act provoked a major EU-US spat over subsidies for electric vehicle supply chains. The Biden administration addressed some EU concerns by writing controversial rules to implement the law. So then what happened?
First, some background on electric vehicles (EVs).
US really needs to cut tailpipe emissions to meet Paris climate goals.
US consumers have been slow to switch from internal combustion engine cars to EVs. In 2021, only 5% of new US vehicles were EVs.
China: 16%
EU: 18%
2/
It's not as if American consumers were failing to adopt EVs - and reduce CO2 emissions - because the United States was exporting massive US production to the rest of the world.
No, US electric vehicle EXPORTS lagged China and the EU too.
US exports to China cratered during Trump’s trade war, and American sales of goods and services continue to suffer. Yet, US exports to China somehow reached "record levels" in 2022. Wait, wut?
Most US-China trade war tariffs imposed over 2018-19 remain in place:
- US average tariffs are now 19.3%, covering 66.4% of US imports from China
- Chinese average tariffs on US exports are now 21.2%, covering 58.3% of imports from US
US imports of some Chinese products have tanked. Others are higher than ever. How Trump’s selective use of tariffs continues to matter for the question about US-China decoupling.
US exports increased in 2020–21 relative to the nadir of the 2018–19 trade war. But in the end, China bought none of the additional $200 billion of US goods and services it committed to purchase under Trump's agreement... 2/n