Coronavirus: ex-US officials urge rolling back tariffs as one way to improve China cooperation on pandemic

To stanch the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington may need a radical departure from its China policy of the past few years – starting with a rollback in punitive tariffs that have been in place for nearly two years, former US government officials said.

Calls for cooperation between the US and China have grown in tandem with the rising estimates of how much economic damage the Covid-19 epidemic will cause. Those seeking to renew engagement, though, are up against American nationalists who argue that the global health crisis supports their calls to further disengage from China.

Last week, a coalition of almost 100 former high-ranking US officials and scholars issued a joint statement calling on Washington and Beijing to freeze hostilities while working together to fight the pandemic. Some of those signatories are pushing for more definitive action.

“We are not doing our own economies or the global economy any favours by having a trade war in place after this pandemic is over,” said Carlos Gutierrez, who served as US commerce secretary in the Bush administration from 2005 to 2009 and is now chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a Washington consultancy.

“We're looking at a second quarter that, I've seen estimates ranging from 20 to 30 per cent down, so to have a trade war in the middle of that, the jobs that it would cost, the unemployment that it would create, it just doesn't make sense.”

A phase-one trade deal that US President Donald Trump’s administration reached with China in January dropped threatened tariffs on around US$155 billion worth of Chinese imports and halved tariffs to 7.5 per cent on another US$120 billion in goods.