In a bid to slow the soaring inflation he’s given the country President Joe Biden is looking to . . . reverse another Trump policy, specifically the last president’s 2018 tariff hikes on roughly $300 billion of Chinese goods.
To be fair, for once this would likely do (roughly) what Team Biden wants, since tariffs do translate into higher consumer prices.
But the policy had a purpose, which even Biden understood: to address Beijing’s various unfair-trade moves, general theft of Western intellectual property and to support American jobs. And no less than sitting Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has called the China tariffs “very effective.”
That’s why this Trump policy has remained, even as Biden opened the southern border and went to war on the US energy industry.
But the “three-point plan” to stop inflation that Biden released last week got universally panned (mostly because it was empty), so the White House set off a new trial balloon.
Problem is, the impact of dropping the tariffs won’t be all that large for most Americans (unless you’re eager to buy solar panels). To make a real difference on inflation, Biden needs to start reversing his own policies.