Reference News Network reported on October 27 According to an article on October 25 on the US “Wall Street Journal” website, the trade war with China has not boosted the strength of US manufacturing. Economic data shows that although President Trump imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods to curb imports, his trade war against China has not achieved his core goal of reversing the decline in US manufacturing.
According to reports, the goal of returning production from US factories has not been achieved. Employment growth in the US manufacturing industry began to slow in July 2018, while manufacturing production peaked in December 2018.
The report pointed out that Robert Lighthizer, the US Trade Representative, said in an interview that tariffs “are returning manufacturing jobs to the United States.” The statistics he cited show that from November 2016 to March 2020 (when the new crown epidemic forced factories to close), there was a net increase of 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States. However, about 75% of the increase in manufacturing jobs occurred before the first tariffs on China took effect in July 2018, when the annual growth of manufacturing jobs peaked and then began to decline. Before the beginning of 2020, even before the epidemic spread in the United States, the growth of manufacturing jobs had stagnated, and factories were laying off workers for four of the six months ending in March.
According to reports, the Fed’s industry-by-industry analysis shows that in industries related to China’s trade, in the face of cheaper Chinese imports, tariffs do help to increase employment by providing protection for some local industries by 0.3%. But these increases were offset by the higher costs of imported Chinese components. The analysis found that China’s retaliatory tariffs on US exports have reduced US factory jobs by 0.7%.
