The author(s) of today’s paper-in-focus, Ben Li (et al.) from the University of Massachusetts, cite an earlier paper from 2012 to highlight the fact that U.S. China-bashing isn’t new.
“Reagan repeatedly criticized President Jimmy Carter for establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. Bill Clinton excoriated the “butchers of Beijing” in the 1992 campaign and promised to stand up to the Chinese government on both trade and human rights issues.
Candidate Barack Obama labeled President George W. Bush “a patsy” in dealing with China and promised to go “to the mat” over Beijing’s “unfair” trade practices. […] Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has denounced the Obama administra-tion for being “a near-supplicant to Beijing” on trade matters, human rights and security issues. An Obama ad accuses Romney of shipping U.S. jobs to China through his activities at the Bain Capital financier group, and Democrats charge that Romney as president would not protect U.S. firms from China’s depredations.”
President Trump’s attack on China, culminating with highly targeted tariffs in 2018, was something else though.
Not only was the (Republican) Party of free trade’s 50+-year policy of promoting global trade reversed but the tariffs were not a blunderbuss fired off by Washington bloviators wrapping themselves in The Flag. They were a very specific response to China’s incautious policy promulgated in 2015, the so-called ‘Made in China 2025’ (MIC2025) initiative.
The Trump tariffs were imposed ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections when Republicans lost ground but what the researchers uncovered, via a county by county analysis, was that Republican losses would have been greater without tariffs than with.
It seems that some Democrats, historically amenable to the tariff argument, were persuaded by the rightness of the policy. Moreover, in counties most affected by the tariffs, and China’s retaliatory counter-punches, voters were drawn towards Republican candidates.
The researchers stop short of saying it but one of the conclusions of this work must be how future trade policy may be more finely calibrated by politicians seeking key-geographical advantage. This was all new to me but I’m sure Party-wonks (on both sides) have been on top of this for a while.
Speaking of Party-wonks, we’ve heard surprisingly little from China about MIC2025 since then; funny that.
You can access the work in full via the following link Trump, China and the Republicans.
Happy Sunday.