That’s a good question, I’ve thought about this some before and while it’s kind of messy I think the general gist of my thoughts is something like this (framed from a US perspective but I think it generalizes to most countries):
Tariffs should be avoided or minimized wherever possible due to them likely costing US citizens much more than they benefit them. However tariffs and sanctions can be important tools when a country does something very offensive, particularly when punitive measures are applied in cooperation with allies. Tariffs and sanctions should be targeted toward the offensive behavior and scale with the importance of the offense.
So my rough framework isn’t that we should always avoid tariffs and sanctions, but that they should be limited, targeted to serve a purpose, and be in conjunction with our allies where possible. I think sanctions on China over the treatment of Uyghurs are justified and from what I’ve heard these have been targeted at the Xinjiang region and at Chinese entities involved.
Similarly, the Russian invasion warrants severe consequences, and sanctions are more effective here because they’ve been imposed in conjunction with allies. If China were to invade Taiwan or threaten to do so a similar response would be justified.
The big difference to me with the trade war was that it was based on a misguided attempt to fix our trade imbalance, which my impression is that most economists don’t really see as a problem. The idea also seemed to be to use tariffs as a bargaining chip to negotiate better trade practices such as IP protection. But these tariffs were applied unilaterally and don’t appear to be targeted at all, and never seemed likely to accomplish these goals. And in the meantime they’ve made things more expensive for Americans and have probably damaged relations with China with nothing to show for it.
Thanks for the response. Yeah I agree that starting a trade war over trade imbalances is significantly different from initiating human rights-motivated sanctions.
That’s a good question, I’ve thought about this some before and while it’s kind of messy I think the general gist of my thoughts is something like this (framed from a US perspective but I think it generalizes to most countries):
So my rough framework isn’t that we should always avoid tariffs and sanctions, but that they should be limited, targeted to serve a purpose, and be in conjunction with our allies where possible. I think sanctions on China over the treatment of Uyghurs are justified and from what I’ve heard these have been targeted at the Xinjiang region and at Chinese entities involved.
Similarly, the Russian invasion warrants severe consequences, and sanctions are more effective here because they’ve been imposed in conjunction with allies. If China were to invade Taiwan or threaten to do so a similar response would be justified.
The big difference to me with the trade war was that it was based on a misguided attempt to fix our trade imbalance, which my impression is that most economists don’t really see as a problem. The idea also seemed to be to use tariffs as a bargaining chip to negotiate better trade practices such as IP protection. But these tariffs were applied unilaterally and don’t appear to be targeted at all, and never seemed likely to accomplish these goals. And in the meantime they’ve made things more expensive for Americans and have probably damaged relations with China with nothing to show for it.
Thanks for the response. Yeah I agree that starting a trade war over trade imbalances is significantly different from initiating human rights-motivated sanctions.