It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Photo by Elizabeth Frantz via Reuters

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

TARIFFS: THE U.S. VERSUS CHINA AND BIDEN VERSUS TRUMP

By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

Oh how far tariffs have come.

In the 19th century, they sparked a supernova economic debate ([link removed]) that fed tensions into the Civil War. By the 20th century, tariffs became clear political villains after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were blamed (accurately ([link removed]) or not ([link removed]) ) for sparking the Great Depression. They were mocked more than 50 years later ([link removed]) as an infamous and boring failure.

But, wow, are they back.

Today, President Joe Biden announced steep, targeted tariffs on a range of Chinese products, as well as the extension of tariffs put in place by former President Donald Trump.

The stakes are high for these kinds of decisions: U.S. jobs, inflation and nothing less than the global economic system may be affected going forward.

Let’s lay out what is happening and what it may mean.

Biden’s key tariffs in 2024
* Electric vehicles: 100 percent
* Solar cells: 50 percent
* Steel and aluminum: 25 percent
* Lithium-ion batteries: 25 percent
* Computer chips (semiconductors): 50 percent
* Graphite and other critical minerals: 25 percent

Trump’s key tariffs in 2018
* Washing machines and parts: 20 to 50 percent. These expired in 2023.
* Solar cells: 30 percent initially, to phase down to 15 percent.
* Steel: 25 percent
* Aluminum: 10 percent
* Miscellaneous consumer goods, including hats and clothing: 25 percent

Now let’s turn to key questions.

Did Biden keep most of the Trump tariffs?

For China? Broadly, yes, other than the washing machine tariffs. Biden’s approach was different for Europe, though. He retooled the steel and aluminum tariffs for the European Union in December, suspending them ([link removed].) until at least 2025.

What effect did the Trump tariffs have?

This is highly debated. (See the 19th century ([link removed]) , the 20th century ([link removed]) and history repeating ([link removed]) itself.)

There are plenty of groups on the right, especially free-trade groups, that argue that Trump’s tariffs increased costs for supply-dependent businesses and consumers. And yet there are plenty of industry groups that say there were economic benefits.

Let’s take washing machines as an example. The conservative Heritage Foundation ([link removed]) railed against those tariffs, arguing there was a direct 12-percent increase in the cost of washing machines for American consumers while that tariff was active. Butsome trade experts argued ([link removed]) that the Trump tariff revitalized the dying American washer industry and created a few thousand jobs.

OK, but overall, what did the Trump tariffs do?

There were myriad effects that are still being evaluated.

A 2023 report from the U.S. International Trade Commission ([link removed]) (USITC) found:
* American steel benefitted. Imports went down, domestic production ultimately was higher and capacity hit a 14-year record.
* At the same time, the price of steel increased at a much higher rate in the United States. That was good for the steel industry, but added to price pressure for products downstream. The USITC concluded that “For downstream industries, the effects are largely negative but differ in magnitude.”
* For the other products Trump tariffed, the agency had similar conclusions: Prices went up for consumers, but if they were buying things produced in the U.S., the increase was not large – about 3 to 4 percent. At the same time, the value of U.S. production increased.

Other studies found that the tariffs, overall, hurt Americans financially:
* Loss of jobs. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research ([link removed]) pointed to job losses from the Trump tariffs. They had a loss of 245,000 jobs at the zenith of their effect, a2021 study ([link removed]) commissioned by the pro-China-trade U.S.-China Business Council found. And the independent Tax Foundation concluded in 2023 ([link removed]) there was a long-term net loss of 166,000 jobs from the tariffs.
* Loss of income. There was an overall “reduction in U.S. real income of $1.4 billion per month by the end of 2018,” according to a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study published in 2019 ([link removed]) .

Yet Trump’s policies were popular in the U.S., the NBER paper added. As The New York Times ([link removed]) put it, those “aggressive tariffs on foreign products were a political success for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.”

What does candidate Trump want to do now?

The former president has not put out a specific policy paper on his proposals, but has said clearly in his speeches that he is considering ([link removed]) at least a 10 percent tariff on all imports from all countries, as well as up to 60 percent tariffs on goods from China. Trump said in a Saturday campaign speech in New Jersey that he’d put “a 200 percent tax on every car that comes in from those plants,” referring to Chinese vehicles from Mexico ([link removed]) .

It is not clear whether Trump, as president, would have the ability to levy such far-reaching tariffs on his own.

Such a sweeping plan would invite both hard-to-predict and also widely disruptive effects ([link removed]) , some financial experts and right-leaning think tanks have warned. Analyses from unconnected groups — some nonpartisan ([link removed]) and some with a left-ideological lean ([link removed].) — conclude that the idea would likely reduce economic growth in the U.S.

We found one group focused on domestic businesses and agriculture that f ([link removed]) ound the policy could trigger growth. ([link removed]) That is the minority view at the moment.

Why is this important?

The protectionist shift by presidential nominees of both parties — the current and former presidents — underscore an isolationist mood in the United States.

It also is driven by the rise of China and China’s economy.

At the same time, these current conditions ride in parallel to a long history of U.S. steps and missteps in trade.

Tariffs reward some winners. But they also mean significant losses. We’ll be thinking about this more – to try to pinpoint, if possible, who benefits and who gets hurt from both candidates’ plans.

For now, it felt time to mark this piece of economic history poised to repeat itself, in slightly different form.
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: What to know asjury selection begins for Sen. Bob Menendez’s federal corruption trial ([link removed])
* One Big Question: How will Michael Cohen’s testimony affect Donald Trump’s hush money trial? William Brangham reports from New York ([link removed]) .
* A Closer Look: How Democrats plan to keep abortion rights front and center in battleground states ([link removed])
* Perspectives: College students on divisions over Israel, safety and what is considered free speech ([link removed])

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Ethan Dodd, @ethandasaxman ([link removed])
News Assistant

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced ([link removed]) his plan to hike tariffs on $18 billion worth of annual imports from China, including on steel, aluminum, electric vehicles, solar panels and semiconductors. These latest taxes build on tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on more than $300 billion in Chinese imports, which Biden has largely kept in place.

Today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection works with the Department of Commerce to administer tariffs. But when the U.S. first started slapping duties on foreign goods, enforcement was a job for the entity known as the “revenue cutters,” or the Revenue Cutter Service later on.

Our question: What is the present-day name of the agency first created to enforce the tariffs of the U.S. government?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: How many contacts did one of ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s phones have?
The answer: 39,745 ([link removed]) . That eye-popping number was provided by forensic analyst Douglas Daus, who had studied data from two of Cohen’s iPhones. Daus said nearly 40,000 phone contacts is “unusual,” adding that he typically finds hundreds, maybe thousands, when extracting data from cell phones.

Congratulations to our winners: Julia Burke and Tony Zuniga (for getting closest without going over)!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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