Unions, manufacturing groups and some economists say the administration may need to do much more to restrict Chinese imports if it hopes to ensure that Mr. Biden’s vast industrial initiatives are not swamped by lower-cost Chinese versions of the same emerging technologies.
“It is a very clear and present danger, because the industrial policy of the Biden administration is largely focused on not the traditional low-skill, low-wage manufacturing, but new, high-tech manufacturing,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist who specializes in trade policies.
“Those are precisely the areas where China has upped its own investments,” he said.
Both America and China are using large government subsidies to stoke economic growth and try to dominate what they believe will be the most important global markets of this century: the technologies meant to speed a global transition away from fossil fuels in order to avert catastrophic climate change.
Chinese officials have poured money into factories, including offering attractive loans from state-run banks to companies that might not have survived otherwise, to help offset a real estate crisis and sluggish domestic consumption. Those factories often run on low-cost labor.
Biden has conditioned federal money on companies paying relatively high wages or providing child care for workers. Other credits are conditioned on factories drawing on components that are mined or produced in America. Mr. Biden has staked his re-election pitch on creating more well-paying jobs, particularly union jobs, but some economists have raised concerns that those efforts to change corporate behavior will undermine his core industrial-policy objectives.
“On the one hand the Biden administration is doing everything it can to increase consumption of renewable energy products,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research center. “On the other hand, it is warning China against the sale of cheap renewable energy products, which would boost American consumption of the very products we’re trying to encourage.”
@HareOliviaDemocrat2wks2W
Biden should be applauded for his efforts to make the U.S. competitive in the emerging, green technologies of the future and hold China to fair trade practices, you can't place the blame solely on China "cheating" the system.
They put vast amounts of government resources into investing in high-speed rail, solar panels, EVs and battery storage, and now they are miles ahead in terms of infrastructure and technology - it's smart, foresighted industrial policy that has a long game.
Meanwhile, the U.S Congress seems to be more and more interested in banning books, impeaching… Read more
@FierceJerkyRepublican2wks2W
Congress under the Democrats (with their full control) refused to take up immigration reform, tariff reform, wage and tax reform and medical/healthcare reform.
The DO-NOTHING CONGRESS is composed of those that want to maintain power.
We will never get “fair competition “ from China since the latter never plays by the rules. They are in the process of boosting manufacturing as a means to restore China’s economic growth without regard to profitability and are, instead, in the process of flooding international markets with cheap goods that will undermine homegrown manufacturing in many countries, including this one.
China must be an exception to the normal rules of free trade if we are to maintain a decent manufacturing base for clean energy, green transportation and other essential industries. Biden is right to impose tariffs no matter what the free trade purists say.
The US cheats far more on international trade than China does. Indeed, it is the US that has been holding up the WTO because the US only wants "free trade" on its terms. The WTO also ruled in favor of China and the US did not like that. So, like the spoiled child with the ball, the US is trying to wreck the whole system. Fortunately, the rest of the world is still open to trading and benefiting from it.
@ISIDEWITH2wks2W
Do you believe restricting imports from China is fair if it protects American jobs and industries?
@9LMYKVPIndependent2wks2W
yes because china and america aren't the best of friends china is anti communist and we donr like that yet we are their biggest consumer
Free trade when we are selling. Tariffs when they are selling. It will fuel inflation and hurt the very people Biden is trying to woo. Economics decision are bad when based on nationalism.
@CynicalWaspGreen2wks2W
It's not free trade when the major exporters on the Chinese side are either state-owned or backed by state-owned banks.
The danger is that they initially sell abroad at a loss to destroy non-Chinese competitors, and then threaten to cut off access to those cheap exports in order to pressure other countries into acquiescing to their foreign-policy agenda.
@BrightGiraffeForward2wks2W
The focus is too much on high end manufacturing. There is a sense that America has no hope of competing on things like microwaves, small plastic products, or any individual component of a larger object.
But this misses the point that low end, small value items end up having a huge network effect on both our national manufacturing skills, and on the larger communities.
Having no hand in making the millions of little things that surround us robs us of the inventiveness that characterized generations of Americans before, it hollows out communities because they are no longer supported by the smaller manufacturing concerns they once were centered around economically, and it plays a large hand in exacerbating inequality because production of high end products tend to have highly concentrated wage scales too.
@UnanimousPonyDemocrat2wks2W
The issue here is dumping. It has been a problem with the PRC for years. It is a violation of the WTO and pretty much every other trade accord. We can add in the overwhelming violations of TRIPS by the PRC as well. Dumping undoes any semblance of Comparative Advantage. So Biden is making the right move. They may have to move to full import blocks in several categories of goods. The WTO is off the table at this point as the US has begun to routinely ignore it and the WTO has no power.
How ironic that this administration has been preaching carbon neutrality by any means necessary with lofty timelines to get there. Now we are in an election year and it turns out they really don't want cheap solar and cheap EV's. Who would've known.
@ISIDEWITH2wks2W
Should the US risk possibly slower adoption of green technologies to ensure they are made domestically?
@9LN4PDP2wks2W
I think they should keep things the same as normal unless one takes upon action.
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