Keyu Jin: belief

Transcript context

…Question to you as an economist, is tariffs a useful, effective tool for global trade? No. I think that there is a real problem in global trading system and globalization in general that is not going to be resolved by tariffs. We do need to think about more harmony between countries where let’s say not one country dominates. And here I’d push back on China and say, “Yes, you have amazing companies and competitive companies, but you just can’t dominate everything. That would not be good for global harmony. You need to give other countries an opportunity. You need to develop your own internal economy, rely on your consumers as part of the deal.” Tariffs, this kind of highly protectionist method is very distortionary and it’s going to be bad for the US. I’d actually argue that both China and the US have totally taken advantage and also enjoyed the global economic realm under the US liberal order. I think that China quite likes it actually. US kept at peace and during this peaceful times, things were working very well economically, technologically. They kept the sea lanes open. They did their part to preserve peace to the extent they can, I guess. But China wants peace. Only with peace can they do what they can and actually US, despite saying they’ve been victimized, look, they’ve had a very, very good time. Never have quality of life, standards of living, technology risen as much as the US did under its own liberal order than it has ever before, and the amount of influence and power. Yes, of course, you can blame the US for lots of things that happened, but it actually had a really good time and China as well. So now they’re going to take this apart. They think that they’re going to be somehow better off that American people and Chinese people are going to be better off under more disorderly, fragmented rule of a jungle kind of world. That’s an illusion. That’s what politicians tell their people, but that’s not the truth. So what are, if not tariffs, ways to incentivize countries like the United States to build internally? So to build semiconductor chips internally, for example?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.