As Trump Vows Larger China Tariffs, How Did His Trade War Play Out the First Time Around? (2024)

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to levy larger tariffs on imported Chinese goods when he takes office for a second term.

How did Trump’s trade war with China, both a major economic rival and trade partner of the U.S., play out during his first presidential administration?

The above video offers answers. It’s drawn from the new FRONTLINE documentary , a two-hour investigation that premieres Nov. 26 on PBS and online.

The video details how, after calling the China an “enemy” that was “ripping us off” and making China a major campaign issue in 2016, Trump in 2017 held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. There, Trump delivered a sharp message about how he saw the China-U.S. relationship.

“I think that that summit communicated to kind of a shocked Xi Jinping that the Trump administration was determined to compete, and to no longer pursue this kind of flawed strategy of cooperation and engagement,” retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser at the time, tells FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith.

The video then shows how the Trump administration called out longstanding allegations that China was stealing intellectual property from U.S. and other Western corporations — prompting denials from the Chinese government about such “technology transfer,” and an order from Xi that his diplomats should tap their “fighting spirit” and adopt a more aggressive communication style.

“They were unleashing what they themselves called ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. And it was pretty objectionable, frankly,” John Bolton, another former Trump national security adviser, tells Smith.

In 2018, Trump would order the implementation of a 10% tariff on Chinese aluminum, a 30% tariff on solar panels and electric vehicles, and a 25% tariff on steel and nearly everything else made in China.

As the video explores, it was the first shot in a war that had been building and would last for years to come. The tariffs elicited a response from China, which accused the U.S. of “typical trade bullying” and said it would take “necessary countermeasures.”

“What China did was move its exports to other countries and move its imports from other countries as well. So it shifted the purchase of soybeans, for example, from the U.S. to Brazil,” Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder of J Capital Research, tells Smith. “So that wasn’t a useful policy.”

After several tit-for-tat tariff increases, the documentary explains how the trade war, which continued into the Biden administration, actually increased the trade deficit. Cost increases also led to a decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. Intellectual property theft continued. The costs imposed by tariffs were passed along to consumers of imported products.

Professor Jia Qingguo of Peking University, a prominent academic and political advisor to the Chinese government who often speaks out on behalf of the Chinese Communist party, pointed out what he said was another consequence of the continuing tariffs.

“You have the high inflation. Where do you get it? In part, because of these tariffs,” Qingguo tells Smith.

The U.S.-China trade war is just one focus of . More than a year in the making, the documentary traces Xi’s life, his entry into politics, and how he has exercised his power at home and abroad.

“He has chosen to go down the route of consolidating power; the route of nationalism,” Edward Wong, New York Times journalist and author of At the Edge of Empire, says in the documentary.

With China heavily restricting international media, China, the U.S. & the Rise of Xi Jinping draws on interviews with former Chinese Communist Party members, exiled human rights and democracy activists, academics, authors and journalists. The documentary also features interviews with current and former U.S. government officials — including members of the first Trump administration, like McMaster and Bolton, who helped shape America’s economic and national security policies towards China.

For the full story, watch China, the U.S. & the Rise of Xi Jinping. The documentary will be available to watch at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting Nov. 26, 2024, at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. China, the U.S. & the Rise of Xi Jinping is a FRONTLINE production with RAIN Media, Inc. The producers are Martin Smith, Marcela Gaviria and Brian Funck. The correspondent is Martin Smith. The co-producers are Scott Anger and Elizabeth Hope Williams. The writers and directors are Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith.

As Trump Vows Larger China Tariffs, How Did His Trade War Play Out the First Time Around? (1)

Patrice Taddonio, Senior Digital Writer, FRONTLINE

Twitter:

@ptaddonio

As Trump Vows Larger China Tariffs, How Did His Trade War Play Out the First Time Around? (2) Journalistic Standards

As Trump Vows Larger China Tariffs, How Did His Trade War Play Out the First Time Around? (2024)

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