According to the Washington Post on Saturday, former US President and Republican presidential contender Donald Trump stated before his advisors that he intended to slap 60% flat tariffs on Chinese goods upon his return to office.
Despite his legal issues, Donald Trump has been the obvious front-runner to win the Republican primary and has made a concerted effort to win the presidency again.
Nonetheless, specialists cautioned that the world economy would suffer if there were a tariff case. Additionally, the effects of this would be even greater than the trade war that the previous administration had initiated with China in 2018.
The Washington Post cited sources claiming that Trump discussed “the possibility of imposing a flat 60%” with advisors.
Trump has promised his followers that he will remove China’s preference for trade as he draws closer to becoming the US president.
All of the nations that trade with the US are granted MFN status. The US has the authority to apply tariffs on the imports of goods from people who do not fit into this group.
The former president, who has been charged four times, asserted that the US has the lowest import taxes in the world because these funds are essential to the nation’s budget, denouncing President Joe Biden and pledging to take more action against China.
During his campaigns, the 77-year-old also suggested lowering corporate taxes in order to boost profits.
According to Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, “the trade war from 2018 to 2019 was immensely damaging, and this would go so far beyond that it’s hard to even compare to that,” as reported in the Washington Post. “This threatens to upend and fragment global trade to an extent we haven’t seen in centuries.”
Joseph Biden has mainly kept in place the tariffs that his predecessor put on China. The 81-year-old president did, however, limit China’s access to semiconductors and other machinery.
According to the Post research, Trump increased spending and lowered taxes during his first term in office, adding about $8 trillion to the national debt.
The former president declared, “I took on Communist China like no administration in history, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring right into our Treasury when no other president had gotten even literally 10 cents out of China,” prior to winning the New Hampshire primary. “Not a single person attempted. Hundreds of billions of cash were received by us.”
According to a November assessment by Oxford Economics and the US-China Business Council, the US economy would lose $1.6 trillion if permanent normal trade with China were to halt.
According to figures from the Washington Post, US imports from China were over $550 billion in 2022.
“Trump imposed 25% tariffs on roughly $150 billion in goods, and an additional 7.5% on another $100 billion, while the remaining imports from China were taxed at a roughly 2 or 3% rate on average,” York of the Tax Foundation stated. “The current average tariff rate on those goods was about 12 percent.”
Experts cited by The Post predicted that the previous president’s choice would lead to a worldwide trade conflict.
