US President Donald Trump is wrong about raising the tariffs on Chinese imports being good for the US economy, an expert said after the United States increased additional tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10% to 25% on Friday.
Trump asserted that the United States has lost $500 billion a year, for many years, on trade with China and the new tariffs on China would make the United States much stronger.
Sean Ding, co-founder and CEO of GRisk, a global macro risk analytics platform, said on Friday in an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN) that Trump is wrong about that.
“The way he does his cost-benefit analysis in terms of tariffs and trade doesn’t make economic sense at all, because having a trade deficit with China, or having a trade deficit of $400 billion with China does not mean that the U.S. consumers are not benefiting from the same sort of import from China. So that cost-benefit analysis is not just a matter of losing money to China,” said Ding.
He added that the American consumers will suffer most from the tariffs.
“And by our calculations, I think, an individual U.S. consumer would probably have to share around $700 dollars of actual burden in their annual expenses, purchasing furniture, consumer goods you name it at grocery stores. So that burden is going to be borne by the American consumers for sure,” said Ding.
Sara Hsu, associate professor of economics with the State University of New York at New Paltz, also shared her views about the tariffs.
“China is likely to impose tariffs on U.S. imports, and there is going to be a sort of tit for tat trade war like we saw in recent months. There’s no end in sight right now, which is really concerning, especially for the stock market, as well as for a lot of business owners, certainly for consumers who are going to be, now going to the store and paying a lot more than they expected, because the producers won’t be able to hold back on passing these costs anymore,” said Hsu.
