This is a common theme in Republican administrations dating back to presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. What you do is you break the government, make it very hard for the government to function, and then you loudly announce that the government can’t do anything.
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The Case for Free Trade
Repeal the Jones Act,** a century-old “Buy American” maritime law that has decimated the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
Work with Congress to restore the President’s Trade Promotion Authority, which would expedite the negotiation of trade agreements with the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Taiwan, the European Union, and other allies, and keep trade-unrelated provisions out of trade agreements.
Restore the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution process to full strength.
Create a successor to the WTO (assuming that it has been fatally wounded) that is open only to liberal democracies. This would prevent authoritarian countries like China from abusing the organization for their own ends.
Adopt a multi-pronged China strategy to convince the Chinese government to reform its illiberal human rights and trade policies.
Rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), whose 11 members are developing institutional trade norms in an important geopolitical region without U.S. input or involvement.
Reorient the proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity to focus only on trade issues, which it currently ignores in favor of progressive wish-list policies.
Strengthen diplomatic pressure (in concert with allies) against Beijing’s abuses. Encourage cultural and intellectual engagement with the Chinese people, remembering that blue jeans and rock’n’ roll helped to win
the Cold War.
Tariff Relief. When people try something repeatedly and it still doesn’t work,
they should stop doing it—especially when the consequences turn out to be just
what conservative economists have long predicted they would be.** With tariffs,
the proper reform is not only to get rid of the individual tariffs that have backfired,
but also to build institutional safeguards against future abuse.
We are five years into the biggest experiment with tariffs since the Great Depres
sion, and the results are in: The new tariffs raise consumer prices for ordinary
Americans by about $1,200 per household every year” and benefit only a small
number of special interests. Steel and aluminum tariffs, enacted on national
security grounds, angered allies. Beijing made not a single substantive reform in