To Help Save the US Economy – and Lives – End the China Tariffs Now

Leaving the tariffs in place will exacerbate the already enormous strain under which the U.S. economy is now laboring.

COVID-19, apart from its staggering and rapidly escalating human toll, is spawning an American economic crisis of almost unimaginable proportions. Authoritative U.S. analysts predict that this pandemic will to one degree or another negatively affect up to 80 million jobs, of the country’s roughly 153 million, and deal a potential 30 percent body blow to second-quarter U.S. gross domestic product .
Consider these facts, which draw heavily from official U.S. government data publicly disseminated by the Trump administration itself. Under administration policies that have now been in place for three years, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with China, which hit a record high in 2018, remains at about the same level as in the last year of the Obama administration – and indeed, the average annual U.S. merchandise deficit with China during the first three years of the Trump administration well exceeds that under all previous administrations. Newsweek reported last month that economist Chad Brown, of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, has found that the U.S. trade war with China may «cripple the U.S. fight against the COVID-19 pandemic» since the U.S. tariffs levied on Chinese goods «may contribute to shortages and higher costs of vital equipment at a time of nationwide health crisis.» The Council on Foreign Relations’ Jennifer Hillman has come to a similar conclusion.

This article was written by David Firestein, Bob Holden, Mark Kirk, and Dan Slane

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