How Trump’s Trade War Went From Method to Madness
Inside the president’s shift from a grand bargain with China to a small deal.
It started with a carefully calibrated trade weapon, an algorithm that spat out a list of targets for an assault on China ordered up by a U.S. president determined to rebalance the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies. The goal: building leverage for negotiations aimed at forcing wholesale changes in China’s economic architecture while limiting the pain to businesses and consumers at home. “We’ve given this an enormous amount of thought,” Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, told senators in March 2018, highlighting the work of the computer model his team had constructed. “It’s a sensible, moderate, appropriate amount,” he went on, “and it is calculated and created in a very businesslike, sensible way.”
The algorithm produced a 28-page list of Chinese-made products, including aircraft tires, pacemakers, and printed circuit boards, whose total value—$34 billion—matched an estimate of the annual cost to U.S. businesses of Chinese intellectual-property theft and forced technology transfers. The more than 800 items on the list were selected for their potential to inflict pain on industries Beijing has designated as strategically important while taking into account the potential disruption to U.S. supply chains. Adding to the complexity, the task was to throttle back China’s imports without American consumers taking notice or endangering President Donald Trump’s promised economic boom.