Business Groups Want Biden To Offer Clarity On China Trade Policy, Whether He'll Break From Trump

Business groups in the U.S. are demanding clarity from President Joe Biden’s administration on where it stands on trade policy with China. They want to know whether or not he is going to do something new or remain in line with the confrontational approach of former President Donald Trump.

The administration has been mum on the contours of its China strategy as it relates to trade. After seven months in office, it continues to insist that a review is under way of the current U.S.-China trade relationship, but now businesses are growing fed up at what they see as an agonizingly slow process. For weeks, businesses have been prodding Congress, Biden’s Treasury Department and the Office of the Trade Representative to take some action, so they can determine their strategies in dealing with the world’s second-largest economy.

Messages from the administration have been mixed and confusing. In an interview in July, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged that the Trump administration’s trade war with China had hurt U.S. exports at the same time as criticizing Beijing’s subsidization policies as similarly harmful. On the other hand, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the Trump tariffs provided Washington with "legitimate tools" for countering China. As recently as Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said no timeline was available for determining when the administration’s review of the China trade policy would end.

Beyond mixed messages, Biden’s actions to date on trade with China provide a reason to see them as a continuation of Trump’s. To date, the administration has sanctioned more Chinese officials over abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong while at the same time adding more names to a list of companies that U.S. firms were forbidden to invest in.

Trump was well known for his criticisms of China “ripping off” the U.S. on trade and came to office on promises to cut down the trade imbalance between them. Biden was a critic of Trump’s approach to China, but at the same time characterized competition with it as a central part of his foreign policy agenda.

Many of the business leaders interviewed by The New York Times advocated for Biden to restart stalled trade talks with China or at the very least restore exceptions to certain trade restrictions. They complain that without clarity, the U.S. will remain at a competitive disadvantage with peers because of how tariffs raise costs for American importers.

Trade with China, while wounded by the tariffs and the global economic slowdown from the COVID-19 pandemic, has not stalled. Recently released U.S. Commerce Department data showed that the much-maligned trade deficit with China on goods increased further in July to $186 billion.