America's Talking - China Stands Firm After Putting 125% Tariffs on U.S. Imports

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Trade between the world's two largest economies could soon come to a standstill as the U.S. and China dig in on trade war. President Donald Trump hit China with 145% tariffs on imports from the globe's second-largest economy. China hit back with 125% tariffs, but said there's no point in going higher.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_aab635ed-5fc1-41e7-a68e-26c5acd95a37.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. President Donald Trump paused most of his tariffs on imported goods this week, keeping in place a lower 10% reciprocal tariff on products from the European Union and other nations, but he doubled down on his trade war with China, increasing tariffs on Chinese goods from 104% to 125%. China responded by placing 125% tariff on all products imported from the U.S. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief of the Center Square. Casey, the Trump administration said dozens of nations called to negotiate after he enacted the higher terrorists last week,

and that's why he decided on the 90-day pause. Let's start there, and we'll get into China in a bit. Sure, so, I mean, Trump rolled out this broad array of tariffs, kind of unprecedented in modern politics, of course it does, does have some historical precedent. The market's tanked. There is a lot of fear around this, a lot of questioning of how much, you know, how important markets going up and down really should be to policymaking, which is an interesting discussion. But nevertheless, they did tank and they're scaring a lot of people, I think. And Trump said that he trusted his instincts. He felt that people were getting scared. He's an instinct player. That's what he did. And there's a lot

people happy that he paused the tariffs. I saw some in the Trump administration sort of not giving sort of like nodding knowingly in their comments and saying something like, you know, you must not have read the art of the deal. This is just part of sort of an elaborate negotiation tactic. Play hardball, put these tariffs on everyone. And then they all come begging for a better deal. And now the stage is set for Trump to negotiate it. So, you know, Dan, on this podcast, you and I talked, a couple of months ago about tariffs and whether they were just negotiating tools or policy, you know, policy tools. And you were really talking about the benefit of them as negotiating tactics. And I think we're going to see that here, even though this seemed like we were past the negotiation phase and into the policy phase, Trump suddenly reversed it. And now we're back

to the negotiating table. And I guess he's going to try to get negotiated dozens of individual trade deals that are better for the U.S., of course, it remains to be seen just how good those deals are, who are the winners and losers. But Trump is generally right that other countries, many other countries have been putting tariffs on us. We've been very generous to them, not doing it. Now, the reasoning for that and how we may benefit by not doing tariffs is definitely something we can discuss as well. But it's true that the world generally, and most of all, China has been taking advantage of us. When Trump announced, after Trump announced that he would put a pause on most of the tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, markets soared.

They declined a little bit Thursday because of the uncertainty of the whole thing. But over the two days, they did regain much of the losses since last week when Trump first announced the much higher tariffs. Casey, our American investors are going to have to get used to these fluctuations in the stock market during this, this ongoing uncertainty? certainty about the tariffs? You know, as long as there's this back and forth with China going, I think you're going to see more of this. I'm a little bit skeptical of the, you know, I think that investors are not, you know, really who should be driving policy. And they do create political pressure for the president when the markets go down. But investors are very short-sided. They're short-term thinkers. You know, they might be upset about something today just because they're planning

to sell tomorrow. So you can't use them for, you know, They're not going to factor in the long-term benefit of bringing manufacturing back to the Midwest. They might bake it in a little bit, but it's not going to be nearly as weight as heavily as just general uncertainty causing pessimism. I think we have to take the market stuff with a grain of salt. Well, let's talk about China now, 125% reciprocal tariffs. This is an all-out trade war with essentially the America's top rival. Yeah, I mean, this seems like we are finally at this trade war that has been speculated about, I mean, by the time this podcast airs, Dan, or we finish recording it even, there could be a new ratcheting up of tariffs between China and the U.S. I think there's a lot more support broadly for just taking on China than taking on the world.

You know, there's a lot of deals, a lot of our allies we were putting tariffs on in the first round of tariffs. And there was a really kind of question about, why are we tariffing so many people we work closely with? are we going to hurt our international relationships? So Trump is dodging a lot of those criticisms, but focusing on China, he has a lot more political backing, a lot more ammunition. For instance, China basically uses the equivalent of slave labor to when it comes to wages and treatment of workers for the things that are produced and we consume in the U.S. And that's one, you know, there's some ethical and moral questions and problems with that. But there's no way an American worker an American factory can compete with slave labor that doesn't have benefits, doesn't get,

you know, doesn't get Christmas week off. I mean, those kinds of things that we kind of come to see is practically human rights here in the U.S. And so there's the competition question. Workers in the U.S. just can't compete with China without tariffs. There's a moral question of how China treats its workers. Not to mention, Dan, this doesn't talk about it very much, but China's a communist country. There's totalitarian control. It spies on and monitors its people constantly. It has a social credit system. And there's a lot of pretty evil things about China. This country we're so reliant on and we prop up with our economy. So I think there's a lot of moral, you know, questions that Trump can tap into. But there's definitely going to be economic

impacts from this. I think you will probably see some increase in costs here in the U.S. Although, Dan, I don't know. I mean, we had 20, you know, 20 percent tariffs on China already. and I haven't heard a lot of outcry of increased inflation. In fact, we saw inflation decreased over the last month despite the China tariff. So maybe the prices won't raise as much as some of the doomsayers have led us to believe. I'm trying of course, too, is engaged in intellectual property theft, stealing technology from the United States, claiming it's their own. Of course, in the weapons race, China. has a large military, probably second to none, or second only to the U.S. So if this escalates any further, who knows? Casey, last word. Yeah, keep your eyes on Taiwan now.

As the more and more pressure for China, I think they can become a little more unstable or more irrational, more prone to take a rash action, do something in Taiwan. Or maybe it'll be a little bit disquieter, remain at a trade war level. and we're going to see a lot of back and forth and see if Trump really is the master of the art of the deal. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.