Despite their recent breakthrough, U.S.–China trade negotiations should end with America’s strategic decoupling from China. This is not simply in the Trump administration’s interests, but America’s. Only by eliminating our nation’s strategic overreliance on our biggest adversary can the U.S. solidify its security against the conflict with China that is approaching.
This past weekend, the Trump administration’s trade team reached a 90-day tariff pause with their Chinese counterparts. After the two nations’ back and forth of levies had taken tariffs to exorbitantly high rates (roughly 145 percent by the U.S. on Chinese goods), effectively threatening to end the two nations’ trade. However, as CBS News reported: “Beginning May 14, the U.S. will lower its maximum tariff rate on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent, including a 10 percent baseline levy plus a fentanyl-specific 20 percent levy. China will reduce its 125 percent tariff on American goods to 10 percent.”
Market euphoria greeted this dramatic short-term reduction. Yet, such a simple, permanent outcome would be the worst long-term solution for America.
China’s CCP has been a repeat offender in virtually every sphere of international relations for decades. What’s more, under Xi Jinping, China is getting worse and clearly has no intention of ceasing to be so. Therefore, America’s best interests — for security, foreign relations with our allies, and even our own economic ones — lie on a path to strategically decouple from China as soon as possible.
China’s internal actions alone argue for such a decoupling. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have routinely labeled the CCP’s actions against its Uyghur minority “genocide.” That alone should be enough to cause a severance, just as apartheid once did for South Africa.
Yet, the CCP’s oppressive actions against its own people extend beyond this. Internal surveillance of its citizens is routine and growing. The one-child policy was enforced on everyone and lasted for decades. Any dissent — internal or external — is immediately squashed. There is religious persecution. And its deal with Hong Kong was quickly abrogated, and political freedoms there were erased. (RELATED: China Ratchets Up Espionage War Against Taiwan)
The CCP is growing increasingly belligerent toward its neighbors. Of course, Taiwan is squarely in the CCP’s crosshairs and is daily made to feel the threat of imminent invasion. China’s belligerence extends throughout the Pacific region — to the Philippines, Japan, Australia, and more. It also extends to its contiguous neighbors as well, with India being a prime example. (RELATED: China’s Threat to Taiwan: Intentions and Capabilities)
China’s zealous military buildup, far beyond anything it needs for legitimate defense purposes, only adds to its threat. At the same time, it is a facilitator of the world’s worst malefactors, such as Iran’s terrorist regime, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.
In its trade relations, China has long been a notorious participant.
The CCP’s aggressive military and economic ends come together in its massive Belt-and-Road initiative where it seeks to use its economic power to make investments abroad and secure strategic footholds globally. It also takes the more openly aggressive form of espionage, cyber hacking, and electronic surveillance. These means are pursued to boost itself, but also to undermine its prospective adversaries.
Such malevolent attacks are not simply limited to spying. China’s role in America’s fentanyl crisis has long been known. And its cavalier dismissal of this crisis speaks volumes about how the CCP views America and its by-all-possible-means approach to undermining our nation through addiction.
And of course, there is the CCP’s still unexplained role in the COVID pandemic. Even by the most charitable description, China facilitated the global spread of the virus by refusing to acknowledge the severity of the virus, alert world health authorities of its existence, and then not cooperating in combating its spread. At worst, and increasingly accepted, the CCP was responsible for the dangerous gain-of-function research that leaked from the WIV lab in Wuhan.
From no other country would any one of these actions be so tolerated. Yet, the CCP has played its hand of being too-big-to-sanction to the hilt. While the danger of too-big-to-fail is universally recognized in finance, it has been allowed, in the case of the CCP, to continue on the far more important world stage.
The takeaway from this should be for the U.S., its companies, and the West as a whole, is that China is at best an unreliable partner for trade. Based on the CCP’s actions, there will come a time when it will be more than willing to exert any economic advantage it possesses to achieve its hegemonic goals.
It therefore is incumbent on the U.S. to strategically decouple from China: items of strategic importance (rare earth mineral, electric batteries, pharmaceuticals, etc.) should face tariffs so high that it forces U.S. businesses to either produce the items at home, or at least to source them from secure, non-adversarial nations.
If America insists on maintaining its trade with China for cheap socks, so be it. However, for items of critical importance — as drugs and medical equipment were during COVID — it is time that our dependence was removed from our primary adversary’s control. And we should leave a tariff regime in place to ensure that it is.
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J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company
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