Tom Cotton on Tariffs: Trump Is Trying to Level the Playing Field with Communist China

EXCERPT:

COTTON: “As I argue in '7 Things You Can't Say About China,' China has waged an economic world war, especially against the United States, going back several decades. They subsidize their own companies, they give them all kinds of concessions on taxes and land and regulation, often times they own these companies, something no American company can compete with fairly. At the same time, they attack our companies, they hack into their systems, steal their intellectual property, they exclude them from the Chinese market, they enforce technology transfers if they admit them to the Chinese market. So what President Trump has long tried to do is level the playing field with communist China. And is not just the tariffs. As you say, they're also taking important policy steps like closing the so-called 'de minimis loophole,' which allows hundreds of dollars of goods in individual orders to come to the United States from China, undermining American businesses, evading American tax and tariff laws. He closed that as well. So that's just a small first step to making communist China play by the same rules that the rest of the civilized world does."