The Trump administration was able to reshape America's trade policy in large part because it simply decided to ignore anything that punctured its manufactured reality about how tariffs work.
Take, for example, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo doing her best Navarro impression during an interview earlier this month with MSNBC. Asked about whether the Biden administration would roll back the Trump tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other goods from China, Raimondo argued that "The data shows that those tariffs have been effective."
Researchers from Columbia University, Princeton University, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concluded that the tariff costs "Have been passed on entirely to U.S. importers and consumers." More than three years after Trump launched his trade war, these facts are no longer in doubt.
"The tariffs have shifted injury from one industry to a much broader segment of the economy," the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, a trade group that represents 30,000 companies with over 1 million workers, wrote to the White House in a letter responding to Raimondo's comments about the tariffs' effectiveness.
Through its first 50 days in office, the Biden administration has given no indication that it is interested in providing relief to American businesses beset by Trump's tariffs.
Perhaps the best illustration of how Democrats are seeking to entrench Trump's tariffs as mainstream U.S. trade policy is a proposal drafted by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a longtime family friend and close ally of Biden's.
Rather than recycling tariff revenue through Washington, D.C., and then pretending it is helping the very businesses and communities being harmed by the tariffs themselves, the Biden administration should take the shortcut and simply abolish the tariffs.
https://reason.com/2021/03/19/biden-democrats-are-locking-in-trumps-tariffs/
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