(Stock photo)
WASHINGTON – A Utah Congressman says President Trump’s multi-billion dollar “trade war” with China is turning Utah businesses into casualties.
Rep. John Curtis fears Utah will be “littered with dead companies.”
“The unpredictability has hit Utah in a really hard way, assuming that these tariffs are coming in already,” he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Curtis said businesses are trying to determine “how to place orders, how to plan for the future, and all of those things.”
Economic experts like William Reinsch with the Center for Strategic and International Studies told that House panel President Trump’s boosted tariffs on $200 billion on Chinese goods – even though China has retaliated – are the best of the worst ways to force that country into better trade deals.
“This reminds me of two 8-year-olds having a staring contest waiting to see who’s going to blink first,” said Reinsch.
“The President has only one tactic, which is: escalate (and) up the ante.”
The experts also told the panel China is unafraid of the U.S. cracking down on that country’s intellectual property theft.
Curtis is pushing a non-binding bill to give Congress a say in imposing tariffs for national security interests.
