U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. (Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
Joe Biden often gets portrayed as the anti-Trump. Biden has reversed as much of what Trump did as he could. But China trade, important as it is, seems to be an exception. This fact became crystal clear during the recent trade talks between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. On this matter, the current administration has decided to take just about its every cue from Trump.
Though the commentariat and many in Tai’s political party roundly criticized Trump for taking as hard a line with China as he did, especially the imposition of a wide range of rather steep tariffs, Katherine Tai showed not the least inclination to soften this government’s position or make any concessions. When Liu He asked as a gesture of good will that Tai reduce the tariffs that Trump had imposed in 2019, she flatly refused.
Far from diverging from her president’s predecessor, she built her position around the two-phase agreement that the Trump White House reached with Beijing in January 2020. China, she claimed, had no business asking for concessions since it had failed in all ways to abide by the first phase of the Trump agreement. Contrary to Beijing’s promises, China, she argued, had not curtailed copyright and patent infringements sufficiently or stopped the practice of requiring Americans doing business in that country share technologies and trade secrets with a Chinese partner. Beijing’s recent invitation to the American financial giant Blackrock to construct and sell investment products in China was clearly seen as insufficient in fulfilling another of Beijing’s promises to open the country to American finance. And though China’s imports of American goods and services has risen smartly in the past couple of years, the figures have fallen far short of the targets put into the agreement.
If anything, Tai was even more strident than Trump had been. She promised to step up the pressure on China, vowing to use “every tool” available to change what she described as Beijing’s “authoritarian state-centric approach to trade.” Tai threatened another “Section 301 investigation” of the sort Trump used to initiate the tariffs back in 2019. She accelerated the process by bringing up China’s subsidies for state enterprises and its industrial policies generally, issues that the Trump agreement schedules for a later date under the second phase of the agreement.
The only difference from Trump’s approach was Tai’s promise that the United States would seek “allies” and “agreements” with international organizations and other nations to raise pressure on China. Rather than a substantive difference, this constituted little more than a talking point. Washington has all but discounted the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as applicable to the matter of China trade. Tai did not even mention the G-7 or the G-20. She did point to the recent U.S.-EU agreement on competition between Boeing and Airbus, but if America truly wants a united front with Europe against China, it would lift Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs on European producers. These remain in place. Neither has the United States done much to consummate a trade agreement with the newly separate United Kingdom, nor has it approached the successor to the defuncted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (PATPP). This decision is especially noteworthy since last month China applied for admission to that agreement.
In the time since Trump’s policies caused such consternation, many in think tanks, universities, and no doubt analysts in the U.S. Trade Representative’s office have put forward proposals that might resolve the strained situation in ways that threaten the world order less than Trump’s approach seemed to do. These include ways for the United States to pressure China less directly by enlisting the assistance of international organizations. Other proposals have suggested methods to scale back on the tariffs and otherwise implement more gradual approaches than those in the January 2020 agreement. Thoughtful as some of these suggestions are, it is apparent that on this matter, the Biden White House has decided to remain as demanding and determined as was the Trump White House and in the same ways. Whatever this administration’s clear desires to separate itself from Trump, his manner, and his policies, they do not extend to the issue of China trade.
