DECOUPLING: It’s Time To End Permanent Normal Trade Relations With China.

While there is no shortage of worthwhile proposals to realign the U.S.-China economic relationship, one in particular would reset our deeply skewed trade arrangement to its rightful place: suspending or revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations, or PNTR.

This suspension or revocation would allow Congress to once again determine an appropriate tariff rate on all Chinese imports into our country, beyond the sweeping Section 301 tariffs that have been in place since the Trump administration.

PNTR is a U.S. legal designation given to some foreign trading partners, and was granted to China as part of the negotiations heading into its ascension into the World Trade Organization more than twenty years ago. This “normalcy” locked in tariffs for Chinese exports to the United States at a low baseline, removed those tariff rates from an annual congressional review, and created the environment in which Chinese imports saturated the American market. Resultingly, 3.7 million American jobs were lost to the yawning trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2018.

That is imbalanced trade that’s tangible. You can see it in erstwhile manufacturing communities in every U.S. state that have unstable economies and underemployed workforces. The corresponding rise in mortality rates and deaths of despair in them are not coincidental.

Decoupling isn’t easy but it is necessary.