White House peddling snake oil as medicine: China Daily editorial

In his first major speech since leaving the White House in January, former US president Joe Biden offered a succinct report card on his successor's performance so far.

"Look what's happened now. In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It's kind of breathtaking," he said in Chicago on Tuesday.

His remarks, though taking aim primarily at the Donald Trump administration's social security policies that threaten to put the retirement benefits of US citizens at risk, can be taken as a totting up of all the damage and havoc that Washington has wreaked with its on-again-off-again tariff policies and conflicting edicts that often run counter to the basic laws of economics or even the US Constitution.

The White House, of course, is trying to put a good light on the grim reality.

The US leader has brushed aside recent stock sell-offs due to his announcement of sweeping tariffs, saying "sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something".

But the medicine his administration has prescribed for the US seems to be doing more harm than good.

The scratched-bone therapy that has been inflicted on the US economy in a bid to restore its lost vitality has proved to be extremely painful, not just for the US but the world as a whole. And its side effects have been just as severe. It will require much post-operative care and rehabilitation for the US to regain the trust it has lost and to restore its leadership credibility.

That the US administration is now acting in a self-scripted hospital-themed TV soap rather than the real world was highlighted by the White House implying that its grandstanding tariffs targeting China could reach up to 245 percent, supposedly because of China's retaliatory actions in the ongoing trade dispute.

For the administration it is simply the face value of its treatment methods that matters, not their holistic health efficacy. This was highlighted by Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell on Wednesday, who, attributing it to the Trump administration's radical treatment methods, painted a gloomy picture of the US economy, one that is on a path toward weaker growth with higher unemployment and faster inflation — all at the same time.

"The level of the tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated," he said, adding that the lingering uncertainty around tariffs could inflict lasting economic damage. Not surprisingly, US stocks tumbled again following his assessment of the administration's treatment plan, with the Dow diving 1.7 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq sliding 3.1 percent on Wednesday.

Amid uncertain US trade prospects, stock market turbulence, and global sell-offs of US assets, S&P Global Ratings has warned that massive debt levels and political dysfunction could trigger another downgrade of the US credit rating.

In its latest report this week, S&P Global Ratings said that it might lower the US credit rating from its current AA+ by one notch if anything worsens the US fiscal situation in the future. The rating agency pointed to the Trump administration's unilateral imposition of hefty tariffs on foreign imports, which economists worry will increase the cost and price of US goods, slow economic growth and push up US unemployment.

European credit ratings agency Scope has also warned that the US could be downgraded if a lengthy trade war erodes long-term trust in the dollar.

Washington's sweeping tariffs, the bulk of which has been put on hold temporarily for most nations except for China, may have already inflicted lasting economic damage and could still lead to a financial crisis, according to the agency. "The tariffs would represent the biggest peacetime trade shock to the global economy in more than 100 years," wrote Scope analysts led by Alvise Lennkh-Yunus.

The self-inflicted damage to the US economy has prompted California, the world's fifth-largest economy, to sue the Trump administration in an attempt to end the president's stranglehold on trade. The state stands to lose billions of dollars to tariffs. "President Trump's unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy — driving up prices and threatening jobs," Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. "We're standing up for American families who can't afford to let the chaos continue."

This should be a wake-up call, not only for commerce-savvy states in the US, but all countries that have business and trade links with the US, that the US administration should be quarantined given the extent of the damage already done in such a short period of time due to its willingness to minister shock therapy of its own devising.

A united front against, rather than submission to its enforced experiments, is the only way out for countries in pursuit of a fairer and more sustainable trade system and a brighter future for all.