WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s
blistering critique of American trade policy boils down to a simple
equation: Foreigners are “killing us on trade” because Americans spend
much more on imports than the rest of the world spends on American
exports. China’s unbalanced trade with the United States, he said
Tuesday night, is “the greatest theft in the history of the world.”
Add
a few “whereins” and “whences” and that sentiment would conform nicely
to the worldview of the first Queen Elizabeth of 16th-century England,
to the 17th-century court of Louis XIV, or to Prussia’s Iron Chancellor,
Otto von Bismarck, in the 19th century. The great powers of bygone
centuries subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, “Wherein we
must ever observe this rule: to sell more to strangers yearly than we
consume of theirs in value,” as its apostle, the East India Company
director Thomas Mun, wrote in the 1600s.
Now
Mr. Trump is bringing mercantilism back. The New York billionaire is
challenging the last 200 years of economic orthodoxy that trade among
nations is good, and that more is better.
He
is well on his way to becoming the first Republican nominee in nearly a
century who has called for higher tariffs, or import taxes, as a broad
defense against low-cost imports. And there is a good chance he would
face a Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who has expressed fewer
reservations about trade, inverting a longstanding political dynamic.
Among
Republican standard-bearers, “There’s nobody since Hoover who talked
this way about trade,” said I.M. Destler, a public policy professor at
the University of Maryland and the author of “American Trade Politics,” a
history. For most of the last century, Mr. Destler said, such
skepticism about trade had been relegated to the fringes of the Republican Party.
Mr.
Trump’s mercantilism is among his oldest and steadiest public
positions. Since at least the 1980s, he has described trade as a
zero-sum game in which countries lose by paying for imports. The trade
deficit with China, which reached $366 billion last year, makes America
the biggest loser. “Our trade deficit with China is like having a
business that continues to lose money every single year,” Mr. Trump told
The New York Daily News in August. “Who would do business like that?”
During the current campaign he has regularly advocated tariffs as the best solution.
He
has promised to penalize American companies that build foreign
factories. For months his favored example was Ford, which announced
plans last summer to expand in Mexico. More recently he has called out
Carrier, which is shifting air-conditioner production from Indiana to
Mexico.
“I
will call the head of Carrier and I will say, ‘I hope you enjoy your
new building,’” Mr. Trump said last month. “‘I hope you enjoy Mexico.
Here’s the story, folks: Every single air-conditioning unit that you
build and send across our border — you’re going to pay a 35 percent tax
on that unit.’”
In January, Mr. Trump proposed a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports
during a meeting with The New York Times editorial board. “I would tax
China on products coming in,” he said. “I would do a tariff, yes.”
Economists
have long struggled against the popular view that exports are a measure
of economic vitality while imports are evidence of regrettable
dependence.
They argue that the opposite is true.
“Economists have spoken with almost one voice for some 200 years,” the famous economist Milton Friedman said in a 1978 speech.
“The gain from foreign trade is what we import. What we export is the
cost of getting those imports. And the proper objective for a nation, as
Adam Smith put it, is to arrange things so we get as large a volume of
imports as possible for as small a volume of exports as possible.”
But
critiques like Mr. Trump’s resonate in part because economists have
oversold their case. Trade has a downside and, while the benefits of
trade are broadly distributed, the costs are often concentrated.
Everyone can buy a cheaper air-conditioner when Carrier disembarks for a
lower-cost country, but a few hundred people will lose their
livelihoods.
Pietra
Rivoli, a finance professor at Georgetown University who explored the
impact of increased globalization in her 2005 book, “The Travels of a
T-Shirt in the Global Economy,” said Mr. Trump may be finding a
receptive audience in part because the United States has provided
relatively little help to workers harmed by trade.
“You
have much more negative sentiment about trade in the U.S. than you do
in pretty much any other wealthy country, and they’ve lost their T-shirt
jobs, too,” Ms. Rivoli said. “What’s going on there is that in those
countries — which are even more exposed to trade than we are — those
countries have a bigger safety net.”
Mr.
Trump has also accused other nations, notably Japan and China, of
cheating by suppressing the value of their currencies to make their
exports cheaper.
“I am all for free trade, but it’s got to be fair,” Mr. Trump has said repeatedly.
Economists
persuaded governments to abandon mercantilism by demonstrating that
trade barriers impose higher prices on the masses while narrowly
benefiting those sheltered from competition. The United States largely
dismantled its broad tariffs in the mid-20th century, opening the modern
era of globalization. But some tariffs remain, providing a reminder of
the costs and benefits.
Annual
imports of Chinese tires increased to 46 million in 2008 from 15
million in 2004, and American tire makers shed several thousands of
jobs. So the Obama administration, at the urging of workers’ unions, in
2009 imposed a Trump-like tariff beginning at 35 percent and expiring
after three years.
“Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires,” President Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union address.
The measure, however, also increased the amount that Americans spent on tires by about $1.1 billion, according to calculations by Gary Clyde Hufbauer
of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. That money, had
it been spent on other things, would have supported jobs in other parts
of the economy.
China,
moreover, retaliated by slapping a punitive tariff on American chicken
parts — China is a particularly lucrative market for chicken feet —
which cost American poultry exporters about $1 billion in lost sales
over the same period.
Eswar
Prasad, a Cornell University economist, said Mr. Trump is raising
legitimate concerns. Other nations do impose disproportionate
restrictions on American goods, he said. The problem, Mr. Prasad said,
is the proposed solution.
“It
might be that the threat of tariffs or other trade sanctions could
cause American trading partners to open up their markets or drop their
barriers to trade,” Mr. Prasad said. “Perhaps as a bargaining chip it’s
not necessarily so bad. But there is a risk that rather than having that
positive effect it leads to retaliation on both sides.”
He
is well on his way to becoming the first Republican nominee in nearly a
century who has called for higher tariffs, or import taxes, as a broad
defense against low-cost imports. And there is a good chance he would
face a Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who has expressed fewer
reservations about trade, inverting a longstanding political dynamic.
Among
Republican standard-bearers, “There’s nobody since Hoover who talked
this way about trade,” said I.M. Destler, a public policy professor at
the University of Maryland and the author of “American Trade Politics,” a
history. For most of the last century, Mr. Destler said, such
skepticism about trade had been relegated to the fringes of the Republican Party.
Mr.
Trump’s mercantilism is among his oldest and steadiest public
positions. Since at least the 1980s, he has described trade as a
zero-sum game in which countries lose by paying for imports. The trade
deficit with China, which reached $366 billion last year, makes America
the biggest loser. “Our trade deficit with China is like having a
business that continues to lose money every single year,” Mr. Trump told
The New York Daily News in August. “Who would do business like that?”
During the current campaign he has regularly advocated tariffs as the best solution.
He
has promised to penalize American companies that build foreign
factories. For months his favored example was Ford, which announced
plans last summer to expand in Mexico. More recently he has called out
Carrier, which is shifting air-conditioner production from Indiana to
Mexico.
“I
will call the head of Carrier and I will say, ‘I hope you enjoy your
new building,’” Mr. Trump said last month. “‘I hope you enjoy Mexico.
Here’s the story, folks: Every single air-conditioning unit that you
build and send across our border — you’re going to pay a 35 percent tax
on that unit.’”
In January, Mr. Trump proposed a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports
during a meeting with The New York Times editorial board. “I would tax
China on products coming in,” he said. “I would do a tariff, yes.”
Economists
have long struggled against the popular view that exports are a measure
of economic vitality while imports are evidence of regrettable
dependence.
They argue that the opposite is true.
“Economists have spoken with almost one voice for some 200 years,” the famous economist Milton Friedman said in a 1978 speech.
“The gain from foreign trade is what we import. What we export is the
cost of getting those imports. And the proper objective for a nation, as
Adam Smith put it, is to arrange things so we get as large a volume of
imports as possible for as small a volume of exports as possible.”
But
critiques like Mr. Trump’s resonate in part because economists have
oversold their case. Trade has a downside and, while the benefits of
trade are broadly distributed, the costs are often concentrated.
Everyone can buy a cheaper air-conditioner when Carrier disembarks for a
lower-cost country, but a few hundred people will lose their
livelihoods.
Pietra
Rivoli, a finance professor at Georgetown University who explored the
impact of increased globalization in her 2005 book, “The Travels of a
T-Shirt in the Global Economy,” said Mr. Trump may be finding a
receptive audience in part because the United States has provided
relatively little help to workers harmed by trade.
“You
have much more negative sentiment about trade in the U.S. than you do
in pretty much any other wealthy country, and they’ve lost their T-shirt
jobs, too,” Ms. Rivoli said. “What’s going on there is that in those
countries — which are even more exposed to trade than we are — those
countries have a bigger safety net.”
Mr.
Trump has also accused other nations, notably Japan and China, of
cheating by suppressing the value of their currencies to make their
exports cheaper.
“I am all for free trade, but it’s got to be fair,” Mr. Trump has said repeatedly.
Economists
persuaded governments to abandon mercantilism by demonstrating that
trade barriers impose higher prices on the masses while narrowly
benefiting those sheltered from competition. The United States largely
dismantled its broad tariffs in the mid-20th century, opening the modern
era of globalization. But some tariffs remain, providing a reminder of
the costs and benefits.
Annual
imports of Chinese tires increased to 46 million in 2008 from 15
million in 2004, and American tire makers shed several thousands of
jobs. So the Obama administration, at the urging of workers’ unions, in
2009 imposed a Trump-like tariff beginning at 35 percent and expiring
after three years.
“Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires,” President Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union address.
The measure, however, also increased the amount that Americans spent on tires by about $1.1 billion, according to calculations by Gary Clyde Hufbauer
of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. That money, had
it been spent on other things, would have supported jobs in other parts
of the economy.
China,
moreover, retaliated by slapping a punitive tariff on American chicken
parts — China is a particularly lucrative market for chicken feet —
which cost American poultry exporters about $1 billion in lost sales
over the same period.
Eswar
Prasad, a Cornell University economist, said Mr. Trump is raising
legitimate concerns. Other nations do impose disproportionate
restrictions on American goods, he said. The problem, Mr. Prasad said,
is the proposed solution.
“It
might be that the threat of tariffs or other trade sanctions could
cause American trading partners to open up their markets or drop their
barriers to trade,” Mr. Prasad said. “Perhaps as a bargaining chip it’s
not necessarily so bad. But there is a risk that rather than having that
positive effect it leads to retaliation on both sides.”