When Biden wielded the "tariff stick" and once again attacked China, an unexpected backlash quietly occurred in the United States. China is "as stable as Mount Tai", but the United States cannot sit still.
Biden's Moharbour speech
As the world's two largest economies, every move of the United States and China will produce a "butterfly effect" and pull the pulse of the global economy. In recent years, as trade frictions have escalated, the economic and technological struggle between the two countries has become more acute. Recently, in particular, the focus of the Sino-US trade dispute has fallen on a seemingly inconspicuous but in fact indispensable area.
On July 1, the United States repeatedly hyped up the "China crane threat theory" and decided to impose a 25% tariff on port cranes imported from China. Not long ago, on the grounds that "Chinese imports are pouring in", the United States adjusted tariffs on Chinese products involving about $18 billion on the basis of the original Section 301 tariffs on China, increasing from 25 percent in the past to 100 percent. Such an intensification has undoubtedly added another fire to Sino-US trade relations.
In the face of the Biden administration's "insistence", ports in many places in the United States have made it clear that there is no substitute for China's cranes, and hopes that the Biden administration will "do what it can" and cancel or postpone the tariff plan as soon as possible.
Crane with "Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry" logo
This time, the Biden administration has played up the "Chinese espionage risk" and focused the hype on a crane that has nothing to do with espionage.
And this incident is not the first time. In recent years, ignoring the repeated clarifications of the Chinese side and some US industry insiders, the US media and politicians have spared no effort to hype up that the Chinese cranes used in the US are equipped with electronic sensors that can secretly transmit US data back to China and pose a "potential threat" to US national security.
But in fact, it would have been nonsense to compare cranes with "espionage". As we all know, cranes are essentially large-scale logistics equipment, and their main function is to load and unload goods. Although it is theoretically possible to use these devices and install monitoring instruments, the practical difficulty and cost of this practice is very high.
U.S. ports
It can be seen that the real purpose of the US government's move may not be just out of concern for national security. It is intended to "seek welfare" for local American enterprises by cracking down on China, hoping to stimulate technological innovation and production expansion of related domestic industries by restricting and suppressing the import of Chinese-made cranes, so as to reduce the dependence of the United States on Chinese technology products, and then achieve the purpose of maintaining domestic economic security.
However, the Biden administration's elaborate "planning" is not bought by American companies, and many port operators are not optimistic.
First of all, in the context of global trade tensions, as an important node of international trade, the control of the operation efficiency and cost of the port will be directly related to the health of the country's import and export trade, and the suppression of "regardless of the cost" itself is a kind of "hurt the enemy a thousand, self-damage 800".
A more direct impact is that the increased tariff costs will eventually be passed on to import and export enterprises, port operators and even ordinary consumers, resulting in higher costs for the whole chain. Especially for those ports that are highly dependent on imported machinery and equipment, the increase in costs will directly affect their operational efficiency and profitability, which can be described as "shooting themselves in the foot".
Not only that, the port operator also said that the tariff plan is dragging down the speed of terminal operations, and the old cranes are also accompanied by environmental pollution problems, which will cause serious damage to the sustainable development of the environment.
U.S. Port Cranes
Although, the Biden administration's "ambition" is to hope, take this opportunity to promote the production of domestic port cranes in the United States, and improve the integrity and self-sufficiency of the country's industrial chain. But in reality, it is "losing the wife and the soldier", not only gambling on local American companies, but also losing environmental safety.
The Biden administration "abuses national rights" and unjustifiably suppresses China. However, it is not taken into account that if you want to replace imported equipment on a large scale in the short term, it requires huge capital investment and time costs. Not only that, the challenges of technology research and development and production capacity that enterprises have to face are even more difficult.
Taking 10,000 steps back, even if the United States has certain advantages in technology and capital, it is an "impossible" task at present to completely "abandon" China, surpass China, and establish a complete industrial chain from R&D to production to sales.
The Biden administration, ignoring the facts, "overconfidently" wielded the "tariff stick" against China, which not only did not make China feel the pressure, but also allowed the US domestic industry to "bottom out" and attack it en masse.