In 2005, Chuck Schumer passionately advocated for a 27.5 percent tariff on China, calling their trade policies unfair and saying it had to end.
He was saying the exact same thing Trump is saying now, but ultimately the Democrats under Obama and Biden did nothing about it.
Schumer urged that such a large tariff on Chinese goods “says to the Chinese that their unfair trade policies have got to end. The Chinese have enjoyed a huge trade surplus with the U.S. Every year it gets larger and larger.”
Schumer had joined forces with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to introduce a ‘China Free Trade Bill’
The rest of what Schumer said:
“Much of that trade surplus is because the Chinese don’t play fair. They don’t let our goods into their country. I can tell you company after company in New York who cannot sell goods in China or can only sell them under impossible conditions.”
“The Chinese make no effort to prevent the ripping off of our intellectual property. These are our crown jewels. The thinking. The great creativity. The great entrepreneurialness of the American business community is just taken, and they shrug their shoulders.”
“And worse of all, the Chinese pile on and add unfair rules that violate free trade. And at the top of that list is the fact that the Chinese peg their currency abnormally low, so their exports get a 27 precent advantage here in the U.S. and our imports get a 27 percent disadvantage when sold in China. Every tenet of free trade, if you believe in it, says they should not peg their currency.”
“What does this mean for America? It means a huge job loss. We have suffered dramatically in manufacturing jobs, service jobs, and other jobs. It means we have a huge trade deficit. It means the dollar sinks to abysmally low levels, threatening our wealth, and it creates chaos in the whole world trading system.”
Hellbound and Down 