Trade Policy Amnesia

WHILE HE WAS interviewing for the job, President Joe Biden demonstrated an acute awareness of how tariffs work. It's worrisome that he seems to have forgotten that or, worse, chosen to ignore it-since he's been president.

- ERIC BOEHM

In June 2019, Biden correctly described the effects of higher taxes on imports. Donald Trump, who was president at the time, "doesn't get the basics," Biden said. "He thinks tariffs are being paid by China. Any beginning econ student...could tell you the American people are paying his tariffs." Around the same time, he criticized Trump's reliance on tariffs as a tool of foreign policy, saying that higher taxes on Americans was a "shortsighted" way to combat China's "abuses." In place of his predecessor's zero-sum view on trade, Biden advocated for a "united front of allies" to take on China while opening up other markets.