Joe Biden May 14 announced that he will increase U.S. tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 27.5% to 102.5%. He’s not doing this as an election-year stunt. The increase is the culmination of an extensive investigation of China’s illegal subsidies and dumping, conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act. The tariffs will extend to EV batteries. He also announced tariffs on solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.
That investigation was begun in 2018, under Trump. But though Trump demonized China, the big difference between Trump’s China policy and Biden’s is that Biden has connected China policy to domestic industrial policy in a way that Trump never did.
Biden’s multifaceted China policy has a coherence that Trump never managed. Trump’s was hobbled by endless infighting between his China hawks (Steve Bannon, Stan Pottinger, Peter Navarro, Robert Lighthizer) and his self-interested Wall Street globalists (Jared Kushner and the Goldman alums Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn). Trump himself was ambivalent because he admired and envied China’s leader Xi Jinping, who played Trump’s vanity like a violin.
Biden has recognized the strategic competition between the US and China in a way that no previous administration ever has, and he has connected all the dots—advancing US technology, reviving supply chains, creating domestic jobs, and resisting China’s military threats, spying, and financial investments in the West.
Twelve years ago, Chinese EVs had 0.1% of global sales. Today, led by BYD, they have 60%, and their extensive subsidies and targeted pricing allow them to underprice any Western competitor. BYD’s Dolphin Mini costs $21,000 in Mexico. The cheapest US equivalent is the Nissan Leaf at $29,000 or the Chevrolet Bolt at $27,000. In China, however, the Dolphin Mini costs just 69,800 yuan ($9,640), far less than a Tesla.
US tariffs will not affect Chinese sales in third countries. The EU is also considering tariffs, and the Biden administration is promoting Western policy coordination.
At the same time, Biden has done well at sorting out areas where the US and China can collaborate. The week before Biden’s tariff announcement, John Podesta, who took over as White House climate ambassador from now-retired John Kerry, met with his Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, and announced a joint US-China initiative to accelerate reduction of dependence on coal-fired plants and increased deployment of solar.
ON ISSUE AFTER ISSUE, RANGING FROM INFLATION, jobs, and technology, to challenging corporate abuses of consumers, most recently from the airlines, Biden’s policies are admirable. But it’s not at all clear that Biden can turn these achievements into electoral strength.
Why not? The problem is Biden himself. And sometimes Biden’s handlers make it worse.
Consider Biden’s CNN interview May 8 with Erin Burnett. I agreed with everything he said. And I was dismayed by the way he said it.
His delivery was frail and reedy. He kept stumbling and groping for words. Worse, the White House made the boneheaded decision that the most momentous US-Israel policy change in decades would be dropped in as an aside, in the second half of the interview.
This choreography was clearly negotiated with CNN in advance. Did White House aides think that, done this way, it would be less offensive to AIPAC or to Netanyahu? We can see how that worked out. A defiant Bibi doubled down on his humiliation of Biden. His cabinet ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, tweeted, “Hamas [loves] Biden.”
This policy shift called for a major speech, carefully worded to explain the rationale and to show decisive leadership, rather than relying on a president (who is not great at winging it) to make impromptu comments in a TV interview.
Biden has strengths as a policy progressive, as well as liabilities mainly related to his age—that he and we are stuck with. He is all there cognitively and in charge at the White House, but he often doesn’t sound like it. The least Team Biden can do is optimize the strengths.
I am still hopeful that Trump will lose the November election. It would be so much better to see Biden win it.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect (prospect.org) and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. Like him on facebook.com/RobertKuttner and/or follow him at twitter.com/rkuttner.
From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2024
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