No. of Recommendations: 1
There's no way that specific tariff policy was formulated with the idea of isolating China. You don't impose the massive tariffs on the other east Asian manufacturing centers if that's what the purpose of the tariffs is.
Okay, fair. Was thinking more of Europe there.
If China's blocked from the U.S. market, they're going to have to make up for those lost customers by increasing their market share in other Western economies. Similarly, if they're blocking our exports from their markets, that creates an opportunity for other Western countries to export to China to fill that gap.
Well...that's the thing. They really don't import much from a lot of people; the Chinese currently have a €291Bn trade deficit with the Europeans. That's about the same as it is for us. Given that the Euros are rapidly de-industrializing their dependence on China over the next few years is only going to increase, not decrease.
A smart tariff policy against China would have involved tariffing only them, and working in close cooperation with our economic allies in the rest of the OECD and with the manufacturing centers of east Asia to also increase tariff barriers against China in coordination. Instead, we're doing the opposite of that - blowing up our economic relationships with most other developed countries and creating massive incentives for everyone other than the U.S. (including China) to work together to overcome what the U.S. has done to global markets.
I wouldn't have upped the blast radius this much, true.
