Opportunity to reflect on folly of tariff war: China Daily editorial

The United States Supreme Court pulled the emergency brake on a tariff train that had been barreling down the tracks in the name of national crisis, powered largely by political theatrics and a fondness for blunt instruments. The ruling striking down last year's sweeping tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act should have been a moment of reflection in the White House — a time to realize that governing the country's economy is not the same as hosting the finale of a television reality show.

Instead, the response has been to rummage through the legal attic for replacement weapons: Section 122, global tariffs, and the ever-reliable Section 301 investigations. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer insists this is about "continuity", a word that in Washington often means doing the same thing with a different acronym. The tariffs, he says, will remain at 35 to 50 percent on certain Chinese goods. Global tariffs may rise to 15 percent "where appropriate". And Section 301 probes — into forced labor, seafood, rice, subsidies, supply chains — are being polished for deployment like heirloom silver before a state dinner.

Continuity, indeed. The kind that ensures the music never stops, even if the dance floor is on fire. The timing is almost operatic. Even as it speaks of "stability" and "continuity", Washington signals to the US' trading partners that it intends to keep the tariff machinery humming. This is diplomacy by mixed metaphor: extending a hand while quietly loading a slingshot.

With pointed restraint, China's Ministry of Commerce notes that the US, on its part, has tightened export controls, restricted investment and piled on new measures that have "violated the spirit of the agreement", while Beijing has fulfilled its agreed commitments of the two countries' "Phase One" trade pact.

Since the current US administration initiated its tariff war, the two sides have held five rounds of consultations, reached consensuses on tariff suspensions, agricultural trade, export controls and investment restrictions. In other words: painstaking, incremental progress — the unglamorous work of diplomacy that rarely makes for viral clips so beloved by some in the White House. And yet Washington seems determined to relitigate the relationship through tariff threats and investigative theatrics, as if the past negotiations were merely a rehearsal for a sequel nobody requested.

The irony is that the Supreme Court's ruling has weakened the White House's hand going into trade talks. By invalidating the emergency tariffs, the Supreme Court signaled that trade policy cannot be conjured out of thin air by invoking crisis. The rule of law, that quaint principle Washington often exports with missionary zeal, has come home to roost.

China will resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests if new tariffs or restrictions are imposed under the guise of investigations. This is not a threat so much as a statement of the law of political physics: pressure produces counterpressure. The trade war should teach some that tariffs are not a one-way street but a hall of mirrors, reflecting pain back at the sender.

The white paper on China-US economic and trade relations, released last April, offers numbers that rarely penetrate Washington's cable-news fog: bilateral trade exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars annually, deeply intertwined supply chains and mutually beneficial collaboration that has survived financial crises, pandemics and political cycles. These are not the statistics of "rivalries"; they are the balance sheet of an uneasy partnership that neither side can afford to sabotage.

After a protracted tariff war and long negotiating sessions, Washington should realize that even a partial "decoupling" is less a clean break than a slow, costly unraveling. Farmers lose markets. Manufacturers lose suppliers. Consumers lose affordability. Those tariff-happy politicians should lose the illusion that complex systems can be bullied into simplicity.

So here is a modest proposal for Washington: stop making trouble for the sake of looking tough or smart — which only makes it look otherwise. Retire the reflex to launch Section 301 probes whenever domestic politics demand "a villain". Treat the "Phase One" pact not as a scorecard for blame but as a foundation to build upon.