President Joe Biden doubled down on globalism at the G7 summit this week, making clear that his administration is “not looking to decouple [the United States] from China” despite millions of American jobs lost.
“Now, we’re also united in our approach to the People’s Republic of China, and the joint statement released yesterday outlines the shared principles we’ve all agreed at the G7 and beyond in dealing with China,” Biden said during a press conference Sunday in Japan:
We’re not looking to decouple from China, we’re looking to de-risk and diversify our relationship with China. [Emphasis added]
That means taking steps to diversify our supply chains, and we’re not — so we’re not dependent on any one country for necessary product. It means resisting economic coercion together and countering harmful practices that hurt our workers. It means protecting a narrow set of advanced technologies critical for our national security. [Emphasis added]
“Tell that to the 4 million American workers who have lost their jobs to China,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote in a Twitter post in response to the statement.
Biden’s remarks come after he vetoed a bipartisan-approved plan that would have reinstated U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels — siding with the highly powerful import lobby against American manufacturers.
The comments are a rejection of economic nationalism which has been championed by a number of Republican lawmakers this Congress. Hawley, for instance, recently introduced a “Worker’s Agenda” that would see the U.S. ending its job-killing free trade policy with China.
Likewise, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-FL), and J.D. Vance (R-OH) introduced legislation that would end China’s permanent normal trade relations status which is responsible for eliminating or drastically cutting U.S. tariffs on China-made goods which has resulted in a skyrocketing trade deficit and nationwide job losses.
RELATED: J.D. Vance on Global Manufacturing: We Gave Up Healthy Communities So China Could Sell Us “Garbage”
The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” report, meant to be a policy guide for Republican presidential administrations, includes analysis by former Trump official Peter Navarro who advocates for a decoupling from China through reciprocal tariffs.
In addition, Navarro wrote that the priority of a future Republican president ought to expand U.S. “tariffs to all Chinese products and increase tariff rates to levels that will block out ‘Made in China’ products, and execute this strategy in a manner and at a pace that will not expose the U.S. to lack of access to essential products like key pharmaceuticals.”
Scott Paul, with the Alliance for American Manufacturing, recently testified before the House Select Committee on China that the U.S. should suspend free trade with China.
“We should suspend or revoke normalized trade relations with China,” Paul said. “The [Chinese Communist Party] certainly doesn’t deserve the same trade status as our allies and reciprocal partners … our hubris and neglect aided Beijing’s ambitions, weakened our capabilities, and hollowed out our middle class.”
Since 2001, U.S. free trade with China has eliminated nearly four million American jobs — almost three million of which were lost in the nation’s manufacturing sector. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit.
In 1985, before China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2022, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $383 billion.
While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to economic devastation, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages. One such study finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about ten million American jobs while boosting domestic output.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.