Trump's US presidency has entered its second year. Whether he will be a successful president of the United States is still unclear; but what is certain is that he is definitely the most controversial president in American history.
In the first year of the presidency, with the support of the Supreme Court and the Republican Party ’s superior seats in both houses of Congress, Trump ignored the criticism of the United States and the international community and successfully implemented a travel ban mainly against Islamic countries and withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. And tax cut reforms have fulfilled part of their own campaign promises.
Article 201 first applied in 16 years
And the beginning of the second year of the presidency, Trump began to continue to promote his another important campaign commitment: the implementation of high tariffs on imported goods to protect American companies and encourage American manufacturing. Just last week, Trump officially launched the Trade Protection Clause 201, announcing a tariff of up to 50% on imported washing machines and a tariff of up to 30% on imported solar panels. Washing machines and solar panels have become victims of Trump ’s trade protection policy.
What is Section 201 of Trade Protection? Section 201 of the US Trade Act of 1974 stipulates that the US International Trade Commission (ITC) may investigate imported goods to determine whether it has caused serious damage or threat of damage to the interests of the U.S. industry, and then recommend the President to take Measures to impose temporary punitive tariffs on imported goods. The well-known Section 301 is a punishment for a specific country. Although the United States has repeatedly used Section 301 against Chinese imports, the last time Section 201 was used to protect the entire industry, it still has to be traced back to the time of President George W. Bush in 2002.
Specific to the washing machine tariff war, the previous reason was that the American washing machine manufacturer Whirlpool filed a complaint with ITC in the first half of last year, asking for an investigation of imported products. Although the preliminary investigation was completed by ITC, the final decision is in the hands of the president. Since 2012, ITC has determined that Samsung and LG have dumped three times under Whirlpool ’s complaint, but neither has finally adopted punitive tariffs.
It is worth mentioning that the former Democratic Party President Obama. There is an interesting phenomenon in American politics. No matter which party ’s candidate, during the election campaign, the failure of the current president ’s foreign trade measures will always lead to a depression in the domestic manufacturing industry. He promises that if he is elected, he will take tough measures to protect his own industry and expand employment; But after they take office, they will still be slammed by the next candidate. This is true of George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump.
In order to attack the failure of the Republican government ’s trade policy, Obama once vigorously criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, which is a trade agreement that Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw) during his presidential campaign in 2008, and even threatened those overseas Invested American companies take punitive measures. In order to compete for the swing state vote, Obama and the Democrats even vowed to protect the traditional manufacturing industry in the Midwest through exit clauses, which sounds similar to Trump.
At that time, many people questioned and worried whether Obama would oppose free trade, but they were all worried. Although Obama once passed Article 301 to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese tires, photovoltaics and many other products; but his eight-year presidential term was still based on free trade, not only recognizing and supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement, but also vigorously promoting The Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPP) has never used Article 201.
In fact, it does not matter whether Obama is a free trader. Even if he from Illinois really wants to protect the deteriorating manufacturing industry in the Midwest of the United States, the Democrats he is in, as well as the consortium of voters and representatives, will not allow him to turn to trade protection. Under the three-dimensional system of separation of powers, the US president is not a dictator who insists on acting alone, neither Obama nor Trump.
The biggest beneficiary of promoting free trade is clearly the dark blue state on the east and west coasts of the United States. This is the iron ticket warehouse of the Democratic Party, which gathers many giants of multinational companies with great overseas business, especially financial services, high-tech and entertainment industries. During Obama's administration, he has always maintained a good and close relationship with Silicon Valley. During the 2016 presidential election, these multinational technology giants also almost stood in Hillary's camp.
And the Republican Party ’s loyal voter base is mostly in the central and southern United States, representing the interests of traditional industries such as manufacturing, energy, steel, transportation, military industry, and agriculture. In Trump's campaign for president, in addition to stabilizing the Republican traditional ticket warehouse, he focused more on canvassing votes in the Great Lakes region of the traditional US manufacturing base. The use of Article 201 this time is not only a part of Trump's fulfillment of his campaign promises, but it may also kick off the prelude to a comprehensive US trade protectionism policy for at least the next three years.
The Great Lakes region dominates the presidential election
Under the electoral college system peculiar to the US presidential campaign, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have their own solid votes and stable votes. In fact, the final result of the presidential election depends on the reverse of several swing states. The reason Trump was able to defeat Hillary Chill outright was because he won many electoral votes in swing states, especially in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Trump, who has been criticized by the mainstream media for "worrying character", swept the electoral votes of these traditional US manufacturing bases, and achieved the Republican candidate Roma who was both virtuous and talented four years ago. What Nepal cannot do, he won the election and won the White House.
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