For decades, China has used dumping, industrial subsidies, intellectual property theft, overcapacity, and other market-distorting practices to destroy American manufacturing and take over critical supply chains, says trade and national security expert Nazak Nikakhtar.
These practices—combined with the export of precursors for deadly fentanyl that’s killing 200 to 300 Americans a day—give the incoming Trump administration legal justification to target the Chinese regime with a range of retaliatory tariffs, she says. A leading expert on trade and national security, Nikakhtar served in the first Trump administration as assistant secretary of commerce for industry and analysis. Critics of tariffs say that they will increase the prices of consumer goods, especially for the middle class. But Nikakhtar disagrees.
“What I found in 25 years experience doing trade with China is that Chinese companies tend to absorb tariffs,” Nikakhtar told our colleague, Jan Jekielek. “It varies sector by sector, but up till high double-digit levels or triple-digit levels, they will actually absorb the tariffs.”