He had the wrong goals—and didn’t even achieve them.
No, he was as wrong as could be on China. Let’s count the ways.
Trump’s entire conception of the China challenge was fallacious. Trump thought the problem China posed was that it sold us too many things, resulting in a bilateral “trade deficit” which meant that China was “winning” and we were “losing.” Trump clung to this misconception despite repeated efforts by advisors like Gary Cohn to disabuse him. “I happen to be a tariff person because I’m a smart person, OK?” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “We have been ripped off so badly by people coming in and stealing our wealth.”
While it is true that some industries lost jobs to Chinese competition over the past two decades, it is also true that other industries gained jobs due to trade with China and other countries, and lower-income consumers were particularly enriched by the abundance of inexpensive goods China and others supplied. So were manufacturers who were able to use less expensive Chinese imports. One in five American jobs is devoted to exports, which often rely on imported components.
So, Trump was wrong about trade deals being bad for America and wrong about his own ability to make a dent in the trade deficit (which doesn’t matter anyway). Under his leadership, the U.S. trade deficit was the largest in a decade—a failure, by Trump’s lights
f https://www.thebulwark.com/verdict-is-in-trump-wasnt-right-about-china/