Trump Was Clearly Worst Post-War President On Trade … Until Biden

Former President Donald Trump has nothing on current President Biden when it comes to putting a wrecking ball to 75 years of U.S.-inspired and -led international trade policy that grew out of the devastation of World War II.

In fact, we should just call our U.S. trade policy the Trump-Biden trade policy since they are so similar, even though the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been — as hard as this is to imagine — worse on trade than the former occupant.

That would have been difficult to imagine during the chaotic years Trump was in office, when he:

• Walked away from former President Barack Obama’s efforts to put a fence around China with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, essentially the day he stepped foot into the Oval Office,
• Imposed massive tariffs on some $350 billion in Chinese imports,
• Slapped steel and aluminum tariffs on allies and non-allies alike under the guise of national security,
• Threatened to withdraw from NAFTAFTA
  before becoming the signatory to the first U.S. free trade agreement ever without any significant trade liberalization in it, USMCA,
• Blocked any new appointments to the World Trade Organization’s appellate judicial body, essentially neutering the WTO’s ability to settle trade disputes.

I could go on but you get the idea.

Relative to Biden, I guess you can say, “Well, at least Trump got a trade deal done.” To my knowledge, the Biden Administration is making no serious effort to negotiate a free trade agreement.

This is a break from recent precedent. Consider:

During the Obama Administration, he signed off on FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, ending negotiations that preceded him and with a push from a Republican-led Congress. He also signed DR-CAFTA, though it was an expansion of an earlier agreement, the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Later, he tried to win passage of TPP, which would have been the largest trade deal ever completed, at the time. The ultimate dagger came from Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a Republican, who was already cowering to then-nominee Donald Trump. (You know Republicans, the ones who traditionally support free trade deals.) Obama did ultimately gain fast-track authority.

Before Obama, former President George W. Bush signed FTAs with Jordan, Australia, Chile, Singapore, Bahrain, Morocco, Oman and Peru. OK, not the biggest of players on the global scene but FTAs they are and remain.

Former President Bill Clinton pushed for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would have extended NAFTA to include South and Central America, and would have been the world’s largest FTA at the time. It ultimately failed.

Clinton did sign the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was conceived and essentially negotiated under his predecessor, former President George Herbert Walker Bush, perhaps the ultimate globalist, but Clinton pushed it through a reticent Congress nonetheless, with little Democratic support.

He also pushed for China’s ascension into the WTO which might have worked had the WTO kept China’s feet to the fire.

The stain of the Biden Administration is as much what he has not done, or not undone, as what he has done.

He has not tried to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a cornerstone of his former boss’s foreign policy, leaving an opening for China to create it own Asia-centric FTA. It was the single-worst foreign policy mistake of the Trump Administration and stands as a glaring rebuke by Biden of his former boss.

He has not withdrawn the tariffs on China, though they could have been used to pry China and President Xi Jinping away from Russia and Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine invasion.

Trump was self-declared “Tariff Man,” though Biden has without fanfare or braggadocio surpassed him.

The WTO recently ruled against former President Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs and the Biden Administration supported the Trump position and disputed the ruling.

No matter, the Biden Administration has yet to move on the vacancies on the WTO appellate body so it simply doesn’t matter what the WTO rules.

The latest move by Team Biden is to kneecap Chinese access to advanced computer chips or — and this is the real gut-punch — chip technology by restricting any nation from exporting these semiconductors, including any made with U.S. tools.

With a better track record on trade, perhaps Biden’s position would not seem so consistently anti-trade. Perhaps with a better record on trade, there might have been other, less draconian solutions.

In lodging a complaint with the WTO, China’s ambassador to the WTO blasted the United States for being a “destroyer to the multilateral trading system.”

China accusing the United States of destroying the multilateral trading system? How did we get here?

The ultimate problem is that while former President Trump was simply out of control, a bull in a china shop, President Biden views trade from an antiquated and simplistic viewpoint.

The problem is not that we don’t manufacture enough. In fact, the United States is the world’s third-largest manufacturer. We are also the world’s largest economy so we can afford to consume far more than any other nation.

The problem is not that manufacturing job losses have led to high unemployment. In fact, the opposite is true. The United States has historically low unemployment. The problem is people either don’t want the jobs that are available, perhaps because wages are too low, or because they are unwilling to move to where the good jobs are.

For example, not everyone wants to be a truck driver but these are good-paying jobs that require little education or particular skill. And yet they go unfilled. For those with education, there are many jobs in the health care industry, particularly in nursing.

The problem is that former President Trump and current President Biden don’t understand the complexity of trade in a globalized economy, one that was proceeding apace until they took office. Trade, as is often said, leads to benefits that are less visible, less tangible, things like greater choice and lower price, faster advancements in technology, and so on.

I take solace only in the fact that, as the expression goes, the darkest hour is always right before dawn.