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So it seems like the West is finally beginning to wake up to the Chinese Communist Party's skullduggerous trading practices. After all, we're starting to see new tariffs pop up all over the place, from Canada, to the European Union, to the Biden administration, which left many of the tariffs Donald Trump imposed in his first term in place, and is now even increasing some of them. And now Donald Trump is due to return to the White House for a second term on January 20th, and one of his major campaign promises is hiking tariffs on China.

Things are not looking good for the CCP. But there might be even more bad news for Beijing.

Because some members of the Republican Party are looking to shake up US-China trade by revoking the CCP's Permanent Normal Trade Relations, or PNTR, with the US.

Republican Representative John Molinar of Michigan chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. His proposal would bring an end to the PNTR for China, which has been in place for over 20 years.

Well, our plan is to revoke the Permanent Normal Trade Relationship status of China.

Since China entered this agreement with the United States and the world, they've cheated on every aspect. They've stolen intellectual property. They've committed all sorts of violations, dumping, overcapacity. And they simply are not a favored trading partner, and we shouldn't give them that privileged position.

So what exactly does that mean? Permanent Normal Trade Relations is a United States legal term. It's equivalent to the international law term for

Most Favored Nation. Granting a nation a Permanent Normal Trade Relations status is a promise to treat the nation exactly the same as every other nation when it comes to trade, and not discriminate against the nation. And especially, it's a promise to treat the nation exactly the same as the best trading partner, or most favored nation.

It's sort of like an equal rights bill for countries regarding trade.

China was granted Normal Trade Relations status by the US in 1980, but it had to be voted on and renewed each year. Supposedly it was tied to things like human rights. But since not even the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 ever got them to stop granting it, I feel like there were other considerations.

Especially since in 2000, US President Bill Clinton signed the bill that granted China

Permanent Normal Trade Relations status.

At the time, China was negotiating to enter the World Trade Organization, and the US could not benefit from China's status as a WTO member without granting it PNTR.

Clinton explained what he believed would happen when China joined the WTO under a PNTR status agreement with the US.

China will open its markets to American products from wheat to cars to consulting services. And our companies will be far more able to sell goods without moving factories or investments there.

It, uh, didn't quite work out that way.

The United States has already entered a trade war with China. But revoking China's PNTR status would hypothetically allow the trade war to go much deeper. And that's what Molinar's bill seeks to do. But that's not all. Molinar's bill also includes more tariffs.

And we're also recommending tariffs, especially on some of the sensitive technologies and sectors.

And we need to make this trading relationship fair.

The proposal would set minimum 35% tariffs on non-strategic goods imported from China, and 100% levies on strategic goods, with the tariffs gradually phasing in over the span of five years. It would also strip de minimis treatment from low-value packages coming from

China and a few other countries, meaning they'd be scrutinized more and face more fees and duties.

This could raise prices, which would hurt Chinese goods, since them being cheap is the only reason anyone would consider buying whatever the heck this is supposed to be. I love you, Robert Kopp.

Molinar claims that this move would level the playing field and help the American people win the strategic competition with the CCP. In a statement, he added that last year, our bipartisan select committee overwhelmingly agreed that the United States must reset its economic relationship with China. Today, building on tariffs from the Trump and

Biden administrations, the Restoring Trade Fairness Act will strip China of its permanent normal trade relations with the US, protect our national security, support supply chain resilience, and return manufacturing jobs to the US and our allies.

If it is enacted by Congress, which is unlikely during the lame duck era of the

Biden administration, it will be called the Restoring Trade Fairness Act.

Molinar isn't alone in his quest to get this done. He's receiving some backup from two Republican senators. Florida's Marco Rubio, whom Trump has tapped to be his Secretary of State, and Missouri's Josh Hawley introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

These three lawmakers, along with others, have contended that the US's policy of engaging China, including economically, hasn't worked. You can tell, since I'm still putting out four episodes a week on this channel, and not one of them has been called China's Suddenly Super Chill.

And it's true. The US's policy hasn't led the CCP to stop abusing human rights, benefited security in the Indo-Pacific, or stopped Beijing from supporting US adversaries.

When it comes to China's wrongdoings, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

An iceberg that's rapidly melting because they just can't stop producing more carbon emissions than every other developed nation combined.

But the US's policy of engagement with China hasn't improved the US's economic interests, either. Despite what Clinton said.

As United States Trade Representative Catherine Tai noted, more than 20 years after it was acceded to the WTO, China still embraces a state-led economic and trade approach that runs counter to the open, market-oriented principles endorsed by all members of the organization.

China's approach makes it an outlier, and continues to cause serious harm to workers and businesses in the United States and around the world.

You mean to tell me a communist country doesn't want to run on capitalist principles?

I guess no one could have predicted that. It's not like communist is literally in the CCP's name.

The US has known this is how the CCP operates for years now, but has ignored this, in favor of holding talks and maintaining dialogue, which also leads to no actual changes.

The bill would pose a significant challenge to the Chinese economy, which is already faltering.

It would especially be a challenge if Donald Trump keeps true to his word about tariffs on Chinese goods.

But there's no guarantee that the bill will pass. If Trump doesn't keep his word on the tariffs, either because it was an empty campaign slogan, or because Washington succeeds in using the threat as a tactic to get a better trade deal with Beijing, he might also end up choosing not to sign the bill.

It's also got an uphill battle ahead of it in Congress.

Already, many lawmakers and analysts have reiterated Vice President Harris's campaign warning that these tariffs could lead to price hikes that would impact American consumers.

And some business leaders with cushy economic ties to China would be likely to speak out and urge the government to resist such measures.

In fact, one business leader with close ties to China definitely has Trump's ear.

The CCP will also fight back. They're already retaliating against the US's latest tariffs and restrictions, just like it has to EU tariffs.

And some experts believe that the CCP is right when it says that it's prepared its economy for a scenario where it faces heavy tariffs, and that Trump's threatened China tariffs could actually help Beijing weather its economic storm.

Namely, because it would force Xi Jinping to actually focus on the economy, instead of relying on superficial measures to slightly ease conditions or focusing on other issues. So they're saying that by threatening the CCP with tariffs, it would make them back off their aggression in the Indo-Pacific, and that's a bad thing?

But anyone who believes the CCP is kidding themselves. China's economy is in bad shape, and it's less likely to be able to weather a combination of pre-existing Western tariffs, Trump's tariffs, and this bill than it lets on.

Especially considering the poor economic data we're seeing from China is just the numbers put out by the Chinese Communist Party. They're probably much worse than that. China rolled out a new plan in September to bail out local governments that have accumulated unsustainable levels of debt. These measures, however, so far haven't been enough to fire up Beijing's economy in the way that economic analysts and Chinese citizens may have expected.

And Trump could make things worse. In fact, arguably, he already is.

We're also seeing stories, Congressman, about nerf guns, possibly, and Hasbro maybe reducing its footprint in China. Steve Madden has already reduced its footprint in China. Is that what you think we're going to see here, as companies start to look across, see the landscape, see what Donald Trump and his team are talking about?

My, yeah, my hope is that we'd have more supply chains, more manufacturing, more job creation here in the United States, lessen our dependence on the Chinese Communist Party.

Even before Trump won the election, the International Monetary Fund lowered its annual growth target for China. The IMF now expects the Chinese economy to expand by 4.8% in 2024, at the lower end of Beijing's about 5% target.

Next year, it projects China's annual growth rate will drop further to 4.5%.

Their growth rate is melting faster than an iceberg under Chinese carbon emissions.

All of that could very well encourage Trump and a GOP-dominated Congress to smoothly and swiftly pass the bill sometime next year.

Even if these plans don't go through completely, or at all, it could be because the US does indeed get the CCP to make some very necessary concessions.

But that's more likely to make progress in securing the US from the CCP's machinations than another round of the same old talks.

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