Karl Rove: Trump Should Focus on Long-Term Trade Policies With China

President Donald Trump and his trade team should eschew short-term trade gains with China and instead zero in "on long-term policy changes that level the playing field," Karl Rove wrote in a column for The Wall Street Journal.

"America’s trade negotiators should play the long game. The Chinese are," Rove writes.

Rove's four-point plan:

1. "U.S. should insist on an end to China’s trade-related investment measures."
2. "U.S. should demand the elimination of limits on foreign ownership of Chinese companies."
3. "U.S. should press for changes in Chinese procurement rules that require goods sold to the Chinese government to be made in China."
4. "U.S. must press … to end China’s trade-distorting subsidies to state-owned enterprises."

Slapping metal tariffs on China, e.g., plays right into the hands of the Chinese. The real battleground is the future - data analytics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, Rove writes.

"While China aims to command the industries of the future, the Trump administration is pursuing trade policies to reclaim America’s share of the last century’s economy by fixating on goods like steel, aluminum and internal-combustion cars," Rove writes.

"The Chinese are happy to engage in drawn-out discussions about limiting steel and aluminum sales to the U.S. and reducing tariffs on imported American automobiles. This buys them time to develop crushing advantages in technology that will matter much more in the coming decades," Rove writes.

"Chinese negotiators would be smart to tell (the U.S.) they are reducing their 25 percent tariff on imported U.S.-made automobiles. That … would be a small price to pay to keep the Trump administration’s attention away from more important issues," Rove writes.

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