Kamala Harris and Donald Trump offer very different perspectives on the country and government policy, but when it comes to industry and investment with China, their similarities are striking. Both show all the symptoms of a maintenance, albeit an intensification, of the existing accusatory attitude. There will be differences in tactics and tone, but also in the underlying positions.
Trump, of course, is known for hitting China during his term. He imposed price lists and strongly demanded policy adjustments in Beijing. During the current campaign, he has made it clear that he intends to continue on this path if he wins any other victories. Harris has shown all the symptoms of Biden’s continued policies. He would possibly deviate from them, but given his limited experience in foreign affairs and economics, Biden’s position will most likely endure. And Biden, while highly critical of Trump in the 2020 campaign, has since exaggerated the hostility Trump showed.
A useful attitude emerges from a somewhat old test. Since the beginning of his 2016 campaign, Trump has shown abundant hostility toward globalization in general and China in particular. He claimed that globalization had stolen jobs from Americans and that Chinese policies were precisely to blame for this. He pointed to China’s domestic subsidies, its violations of patent protection and its insistence that American corporations doing business in China take a Chinese spouse to whom they will have to transfer their patented technologies and trade secrets. To pressure Beijing to make changes, he imposed price lists on Chinese goods entering the United States.
In September 2018, it imposed 10% price lists on about $200 billion in Chinese imports. While Beijing stood firm, it increased those price lists to 25% in May 2019. In August of that year, it imposed 10% price lists on other Chinese imports. 300 billion dollars in Chinese goods entering the country, and in September it extended those tasks to an amount of 10%. Another $112 billion in goods imported from China. Trump has also tightened controls on generation sales to China and resisted opening up. of Chinese corporations to the United States, adding Huawei. In January 2020, it reached an agreement with Beijing to remove price lists after Beijing made the desired policy changes. Nothing came of this agreement.
Biden’s 2020 campaign criticized Trump for his authoritarian behavior, but once in office he kept all his price lists in place. Biden’s industry representative, Katherine Tai, described the price lists as a tool to get Beijing to replace the same discriminatory policies Trump complained about. Then the Biden leadership took further steps to put pressure on Beijing. It banned the sale of complex computer chips to China, as well as the sale of chip-making apparatus, and recruited Japan and the Netherlands to accept the restrictions. It also prohibits U. S. investment in Chinese generation. Biden countered Beijing’s subsidies by subsidizing the manufacture of U. S. semiconductors. Over the past year, the management has imposed additional price lists on electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, electric vehicle parts, and green generation products such as wind turbines and solar cells made in China.
Contemplating some other term in the White House, Trump is showing all the symptoms of growing pressure on Beijing. It has already proposed a 60% blanket tariff on all Chinese-made goods and the repeal of China’s standing blanket industrial tariff. He has also proposed that an entire generation decouple from China, and remains open to separate deals on customer goods, energy and even some less sensitive areas of generation. United StatesIn line with his last term, he shows a clear preference for bilateral agreements over partnerships and multilateralism.
Harris is willing to continue the same industrial hostility that Biden’s leadership has promoted. However, his tactics would likely be very different from Trump’s. For example, he refused to use the word “decoupling,” who prefer the word “harm. “reduction”, the same wording as the Europeans, although it is not transparent where the practical differences between the two approaches lie. However, the more flexible language leaves Harris with some additional flexibility, which is why Europeans prefer him. He has also demonstrated his adherence to multilateralism, which Trump has rejected. He had supported Biden to push the G-7 toward a non-unusual global infrastructure task to counter Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and in the same way, it turns out he agrees with the so-called Chip-4 that would create a semiconductor partnership between Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. It is possible that she will move away from all this if she becomes president, but she did not give any indication in this regard.
The tactics, rhetoric, and taste will be different, but differently the applicants seem to share a basic position: suspicion of Beijing and opposition to China’s industrial practices and ambitions. Especially since this Congress has been hostile to Chinese industry and investment and to the next one will surely be too, it turns out that in this area it does not matter who wins in November.
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