Weifeng Zhong of the Mercatus Center argues that regardless of inflation, the China tariffs should be repealed:
The stated goal of the tariffs on $370 billion worth of goods — about two-thirds of all U.S. imports from China — was to compel Beijing to change its unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft and state subsidies, to domestic firms. To address these threats to U.S. security, we’ve been asking whether the tariffs are worth the compromise on the economic freedom of the American people.
Except that the goal of the tariffs war has not been achieved. The United States taxes Chinese imports at a nearly 20 percent rate, generating $74 billion per year in tariff revenues. That may sound nice, but research by economists Pablo Fajgelbaum, Pinelopi Goldberg, Patrick Kennedy, and Amit Khandelwal has shown that the tariffs are primarily paid by the American people. That means each of the 124 million U.S. households is paying $600 on average every year for the China tariffs. But there’s little evidence that the last four years of economic consequences for Americans have changed any unfair trade practices by the Chinese government — so little that U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai essentially gave up on pressuring Beijing to do so.
Read the whole thing here.