Tariffs Alone Are Not a China Strategy

The threat is the Communist regime, not the electric cars

President Reagan. Photo courtesy Reagan Library.

If America’s polarized political discourse has an area of consensus, it’s that tariffs should keep cheap but good electric cars out of our country. President Biden and President Trump have both publicly proposed and backed such tariffs.

That may make sense on national security grounds—who wants Communist China to be able to block traffic in America abruptly by suddenly immobilizing the cars?—but it seems like not an adequate substitute for a strategy on what to do about the emerge of Communist China as a global strategic competitor to America.

Imagine if, during the Cold War, rather than setting out to defeat the Soviet Union and bring down the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan had merely settled for imposing high tariffs on Russian goods. The Berlin Wall would probably still be standing, with the nations and people of Eastern Europe still captive to Moscow.