China Likely to Retaliate Against U.S. Tariffs With Soybean Tax
Kevin Rudd on Fox Business
Kevin Rudd, President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, sat down with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business to discuss the potential ramifications of the Trump administration’s plan to impose unilateral tariffs on Chinese goods.
Rudd sympathizes with the Trump administration’s desire “to put pressure on the Chinese government over unfair trade practices,” but expresses concern over the use of tariffs to achieve this goal. He warns that levying tariffs on Chinese goods would allow China to “lawfully retaliate” – as the country may yet do in the global soybean market.
Instead, he calls for the United States to “join with other countries who are affected by the dumping of Chinese steel on global markets in a combined anti-dumping action […] through the international legal procedures of the World Trade Organization.” Even though that process may be time consuming, it avoids the alternative of a global trade war that would hurt “consumers with higher prices, and also workers in those industries which get hit.”
Finally, Rudd emphasizes that American companies, regardless of whether they are “in movies or manufacturing toothbrushes,” can no longer ignore China’s rise in the global marketplace. An escalation of a “tariff-for-tariff” trade war would thus hurt American businesses just as much, because the “new global economy has told us [that America] and the Chinese need each other.” (6 min., 9 sec.)