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Opinion
Trump cannot look to the past to make US manufacturing great again
Instead of competing with China in shipping, rare earths or EVs, the president should target leading-edge industries like aerospace and quantum computing
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Stanley Chao is the author of “Selling to China” (2018) and managing director for All In Consulting, assisting companies in their China business strategies.
On April 2, US President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on virtually every country, friends and foes alike. The purported goal was to revitalise domestic manufacturing and create millions of high-paying American jobs. In the Rose Garden, Trump dubbed it “Liberation Day”, to “forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn”.
Nearly a month later, it appears Trump’s words have no more staying power than his Liberation Day tariffs, most of which he later postponed. The real goal, it seems, was to coerce countries to lower their tariffs, buy more American goods and economically isolate China – all in exchange for easing or calling off the tariffs. Domestic manufacturing was never a priority.
Liberation Day was a ruse. It was also a major missed opportunity to make meaningful and sweeping industrial policy changes.
A president serious about reshoring would have taken a surgical approach to tariffs, targeting specific industries – healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace and steel – critical to the nation’s economic and security interests. Instead, Trump slapped tariffs on everything.
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