President Donald Trump said that he’s prepared to impose tariffs on all Chinese imports to the U.S., amounting to $500 billion worth of goods. In a panel on CGTN America, IPI’s Dr. Merrill Matthews conceded that such a move could lead to chaos.
“There’s a widespread agreement in America that something needs to be done between the U.S and China on trade policy,” said Matthews. “The president is just going about it in a very bad way.”
What the president has correct, however, is how U.S. trading partners indeed impose higher tariffs than the U.S., said Matthews, referencing the World Trade Organization. “The way to go about addressing that is to go into negotiations and try to resolve that, as the EU and Japan recently did with a new trade agreement,” said Matthews.
“But President Trump doesn’t seem to want to do it that way, he seems to want to do it much more forcefully, and he’s creating a lot of chaos with that,” he said.
Click here to watch the full panel.