For Donald Trump, China has served as a major justification for economic protectionism, highlighting our dependencies and need to onshore products with national security implications. But that’s the talk. The reality is more dismal: a less-than-hawkish trade deal this month, with tariffs that seem to isolate allies and, inversely, reshore production on China’s mainland. For Team Trump, three camps have merged into one contradictory mess within the administration. Members of these camps look to use tariffs as leverage for trade deals, as a source of revenue, and to protect domestic industry. No single tariff can achieve all three and brief, ambiguous trade deals do little to decouple with China, friend-shore, and rebuild American industry. Where do we go from here? How will these tariff camps shake out? And how can we improve our strategic approach to global trade and protect America from the very real China threat?

Scott Lincicome is the Vice President of General Economics the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. He writes on international and domestic economic issues, including international trade; subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; and economic dynamism. Lincicome also is a senior visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, where he has taught a course on international trade law. Prior to joining Cato, Lincicome spent two decades practicing international trade law at White & Case LLP, where he litigated national and multilateral trade disputes. He also authors a column for The Dispatch entitled, Capitolism.

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