Trish Regan: Trump is right to play hardball with China on trade
President Trump is playing hardball with the Chinese, making good on his threat to raise tariffs to 25 percent on $200 billion of Chinese goods coming to the United States. This comes on the heels of some 25 percent tariffs already in effect and it could soon be followed by even more tariffs.
Got it, China?
This fresh round of tariffs is being enacted on Friday, if a deal isn’t reached by then, because according to the U.S. negotiating team led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the Chinese drastically walked back concessions it had already made.
We’re negotiating in good faith. They are not!
So, here’s the deal: if China continues to play around, refusing to keep up its end of the bargain, then we engage in retaliation. We can make China’s life much harder economically than they can make ours. We are their No. 1 customer, having bought more than a half trillion dollars’ worth of goods from them in the last year. More than twice the amount they buy from us.
Bottom line, China needs us more than we need them.
So if they intend to engage in economic warfare, and they are, they should remember: right now, we win that fight. And tariffs are a weapon the president tells me, he’s not afraid to use.
This is an example of the president doing exactly what he should do, protect our economy.
American businesses are not incentivized to cut trade with China. They’re too desperate trying to prove to shareholders each quarter that they’re active in that major market.
Heck, they even surrender their intellectual property to the Chinese because they want the opportunity to access one billion people in that market.
So this is where government must step in to protect us and protect our future.
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We have the leverage now. We are still the biggest economy. But, when you look at China’s growth trajectory, we may not own that space for long.
So, raising tariffs on China? I say good!
Keep raising them.