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How Trump Lost the Trade War with China and Both Countries Suffered
Why Tariffs Rarely Work and What Trump Could Have Learned from History
In October 2015, President Obama and eleven other countries in the Pacific Ocean proposed a free-trade agreement, as a way to wane the outsourcing of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars going to China. This was not just to quell America’s reliance on China, but so that other countries could as well. In February 2016, Barack Obama and those same eleven countries signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership into law, which would be the largest and most comprehensive multinational trade negotiation in United States history. It was regarded as a pinnacle achievement of the Obama administration.
Of course, Donald Trump could not cope with Obama passing such a substantial piece of legislation, so he pulled out of the agreement on his third day in office. Fast forward a year later, in January 2018, President Trump waged a trade war on China. So, after withdrawing from a multi-national effort to stand up to China, Trump thought America could do it alone. Because after all, if we learn anything from history, it’s that when countries stick together, they can achieve far more than if they go alone. Instead, Trump imposed tariffs on China, and naturally China retaliated with its own tariffs, which had a crippling effect on certain industries in both…
