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ICYMI: Rubio Supports Raising Tariffs on China

May 9, 2024 | Press Releases

Trump Is Right: We Should Raise Tariffs on China

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)

May 9, 2024

American Conservative

…[T]he Washington establishment is fretting about former President Donald Trump’s plan to raise tariffs on all Chinese goods…. In reality, tariffs are good for the economy insofar as they counteract market inefficiencies created by adversarial trade practices….

Just look at China’s plan to destroy our automotive industry. The Chinese government already subsidizes its auto industry with handouts, tax breaks, financing incentives, stolen intellectual property, and even slave labor. Now Chinese auto companies are trying to bypass all our trade rules…by setting up factories in Mexico….

Beijing’s goal in all this isn’t to turn a profit; it’s to create and reinforce dependencies. That spells trouble for the United States, because dependence on Chinese goods gives power to our chief geopolitical adversary. Remember, Beijing is also using U.S. capital, technology, data, and talent to dominate emerging technologies….

Chinese genomics companies, for example, are infiltrating U.S. hospital systems and buying U.S. genomics companies to stockpile our genetic data. They could be exploiting that data to acquire intelligence or even to design bioweapons….

Part of the answer to this problem is stricter U.S. capital and export controls…. Targeted controls won’t work, though, unless we change our broader economic relationship with China…. [W]e cannot and should not seek to re-shore every supply chain, but we should change the bad laws and incentives that created our $280 billion trade deficit with China. 

This means making America’s business environment more competitive and directly incentivizing re-shoring. It means cutting off China’s access to critical technologies. It means deepening our trading relationship with allied and partner countries whose products we can trust. And yes, it means raising tariffs on Chinese goods….

Read the rest here.