In Our View: Trump-Xi Talks Huge for State

President Trump’s trade policy brinkmanship is risky, especially for the state of Washington.

According to Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a national business coalition, tariffs imposed by the administration and countertariffs from trading partners have cost Washington more than $100 million this year and have contributed to a 28 percent decline in exports. Washington is considered the nation’s most trade-dependent state, with an estimated 40 percent of jobs relying upon global markets. Trump’s gambit is particularly important to this part of the country.

That gambit has seen the United States impose tariffs on Chinese goods, followed by retaliatory tariffs from the Chinese. A spat between the world’s largest economies has global ramifications, and those ramifications could come to a head later this month when Trump meets with Chinese president Xi Jinping. That meeting will arrive in advance of scheduled Jan. 1 tariff increases on the part of the United States — from 10 percent to 25 percent for many imports from China — that are likely to be met tit-for-tat by the Chinese.

Trump’s strategy already has been costly. For example, in addition to demonstrable impacts on Washington products, U.S. soybean exports have dropped 97 percent compared with a year ago. That, and a slowdown in other agriculture exports, led Trump to announce a taxpayer-funded $12 billion bailout for American farmers.

Notably, The Washington Post has reported that the bailouts will help numerous foreign corporations. Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer, is Chinese-owned and qualifies for a bailout check; so does Brazilian-owned JBS, the nation’s second-largest pork producer.

The hope is that the short-term pain for American farmers and manufacturers will result in long-term gains. The United States has legitimate complaints about China’s trade practices, particularly regarding import restrictions and intellectual property theft. As Bloomberg explained in March: “Such violations, from counterfeiting famous brands and stealing trade secrets to pressuring companies to share technology with Chinese companies to gain access to China’s vast market, have long angered China’s overseas competitors.”

The Trump administration is wise to fight back against such practices, but the battle has been carried out in a clumsy fashion. A far better tactic would have been to seek congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation pact that was hammered out over the course of several years by the Obama administration and did not include China.

The agreement would have provided leverage against Chinese trade practices. But by the time Trump took office, many people on both sides of the political aisle had come to oppose the TPP, and the president quickly withdrew the United States from the deal. Unfortunately, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been replaced by haphazard protectionism that thus far has yielded few benefits.

That is what makes Trump’s scheduled meeting with Xi so important. While the president has suggested that trade wars are easy to win, in truth there are no victors when an economic battle lingers and escalates.

The effects of that battle are being felt in this state, and they will only grow if the standoff continues. For the good of Washington, we hope Trump’s strategy pays off and that it does so quickly.