Trade war: Why Biden and Trump are work­ing to out-tar­iff each oth­er

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and pre­sump­tive GOP nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump are now work­ing to one-up each oth­er with var­i­ous tar­iff pro­pos­als, despite both polit­i­cal par­ties enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly back­ing free trade just a few years ago.
The lat­est came Wednes­day, when Biden pro­posed tripling the import tar­iff on Chi­nese steel and alu­minum, sub­ject to an inves­ti­ga­tion by U.S. trade author­i­ties, from 7.5% to 25%.
“Because Chi­nese steel com­pa­nies pro­duce a lot more steel than Chi­na needs, it ends up dump­ing the extra steel into the glob­al mar­kets at unfair­ly low prices,” Biden told a group of union work­ers in Pitts­burgh.
“Chi­nese steel com­pa­nies don’t need to wor­ry about mak­ing a prof­it, because the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is s …