What to do about China? It
employs millions of people manufacturing things that used to be Made in
America, and sells way more stuff to the United States than it buys from
us.
Donald Trump’s
solution is to get tough on China by imposing steep new tariffs on
products made in China. The Republican presidential candidate told the New York Times recently
that he’d levy a 45% tax on Chinese imports. The idea is to make
Chinese goods more expensive so that American producers who pay their
workers more can gain a competitive edge.
There’s a painful side effect to this plan, however: It would, well,
make a lot of products more expensive, and most of the price hikes would
come straight out of consumer wallets. China ships about $500 billion
worth of goods to the United States every year, which is about
one-fourth of all imports. Goods from China include iPhones, TVs,
clothes, furniture, toys and a lot of other things found in nearly every
American home. A 45% tariff on Chinese imports would encourage other
low-cost exporters, such as Vietnam, Bangladesh and Mexico, to ship more
goods to America. Whether U.S. producers would gain an edge is
debatable.
Consumers would feel the pain
Protectionists
often argue that the cost of tariffs is borne largely by producers in
foreign countries. But inevitably, some or most of any additional tax
gets passed on to people who buy the products. “When you institute a
tariff, the price goes up for consumers,” says economist Adam Ozimek of
Moody’s Analytics. “People will also buy less. So consumers are hurt not
just by rising prices, but by consuming less.”
The
portion of Trump’s 45% tax that would be passed onto consumers would
depend on how much competition there is for any given product. Anything
made exclusively in China would become considerably more expensive. A
fancy $100 sweater made only in China wouldn’t suddenly cost $145,
because there would be fewer buyers at the higher price, and weaker
demand would force the manufacturer to adjust the price downward. But it
might rise to $115 or $125, since the producer won’t sell at a loss and
would have to account for the big jump in costs caused by the new
tariff.
Even if there’s
competition from producers in other countries, prices would still rise
somewhat, since higher prices from one major source allows other sources
to raise their prices, too, and make a bit more profit. So if clothes
made in China were suddenly 45% more expensive to Americans, similar
clothes made in Bangladesh would cost more, as well—not 45% more, but
still, more.
That
might help American producers making competing products, but even if it
did, prices for consumers would still go up. And many low-wage
industries that have migrated to China, such as textiles and electronics
manufacturing, are likely to stay there. American businesses and
entrepreneurs are more interested in making specialized products that
can't be produced just anywhere, and in coming up with new producs that
command higher profit margins. The best way to boost U.S. growth is to
encourage high-end innovation, not to fence off low-wage jobs that can
be performed anywhere.
If
Trump were to get elected and actually put his tariff into effect, it
would reverse a 20-year trend of declining prices for many consumer
goods, which has helped offset the rising cost of important things like
healthcare and college tuition and occasional spikes in the cost of
energy. Overall inflation, excluding food and energy, is a scant 2% at
the moment, a level so low that economists worry more about deflation
than inflation. But a big tariff on imports would quickly make inflation
a big pocketbook concern and leave consumers with less money to spend
on other things. Combine that with rising energy prices or some other
mild shock and it could even cause a recession.
Trump’s
tariff plan would likely meet firm public resistance. Economists would
also protest. “Economists disagree about a lot,” says Ozimek, “but
there’s very strong agreement that free trade benefits Americans, on
average.” A poll of economists by the University of Chicago, for
instance, found that 100% of them believe U.S. trade with China makes most Americans better off.
Most economists also agree that free trade—like anything that improves
efficiency and market performance—produces winners and losers. And the
losers usually include people who get the job done slower, at a higher
cost than competitors. Protecting underperformers isn’t likely to help
the U.S. economy. Helping them perform better would.
By: Rick Newman.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
For The #FacebookTeam
For The #FacebookTeam