The Wall Street Journal Torches Trump for ‘Hurting His Own Cause and Country’ Instead of China: ‘Making It Up as He Goes’
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The Wall Street Journal continued its assault on President Donald Trump’s trade policy in a new editorial questioning if he even has a “China trade strategy.”
“It’s all going according to plan, says the White House, and you almost have to smile at this spin in trying to sell President Trump’s partial tariff reversal this week as a triumph,” began the Journal in its opening salvo. “The reality is that Mr. Trump is making it up as he goes, and it would help if he had an actual strategy to deal with China in particular.”
After noting that Trump has escalated his trade war with China, it went on to submit that it isn’t clear whether the administration seeks “complete decoupling” or a “trade deal” with the Chinese.
The editorial continued:
There’s also the contradiction of how Mr. Trump handles other China issues. The President is doing Mr. Xi [Jinping] a favor by refusing to enforce a law passed by Congress to force the sale of TikTok from Chinese-controlled ByteDance. Last week he extended the deadline for a TikTok sale by another 75 days after China walked away from a looming transaction. Mr. Trump also refuses to impose sanctions on Chinese firms that buy oil from Russia and thus help Moscow’s war machine. These decisions send Mr. Xi the message that Mr. Trump isn’t serious about challenging Chinese abuses.
If Mr. Trump is serious, the best strategy would be to rally allies to the cause of fighting Chinese mercantilism. But he shows no interest in that either. He squandered his best chance to isolate China on trade in his first term by walking away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership that didn’t include Beijing. China then cut its own deal with many of the countries that the U.S. left in the cold.
This term Mr. Trump is outright punishing the allies he needs for a coherent China strategy. He’s imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico and insulted Canadian national pride. He’s hit Japan with 24% tariffs, South Korea with 25%, and Europe with 20%. He’s hit Vietnam with 46%, though the boom in that country’s exports to the U.S. since his first-term tariffs has come at China’s expense.
“By far the biggest problem in the global trading system is the abuse of free-trade rules by the authoritarian regime in China. Mr. Trump’s ad hoc, scattershot tariff policy won’t solve that problem,” it concluded. “So far he’s hurting his own cause and country more than he’s hurting the Chinese Communist Party.”
Trump has endured a steady stream of criticism from the right over his approach to trade policy in recent days, the Journal, National Review, Ben Shapiro, and more have all inveighed against it.
After announcing a “90-day pause” on Trump’s sweeping tariffs on much of the rest of the world earlier this week, the administration shifted its messaging to tout its trade policy as a tool by which it could isolate China.
