Just yesterday Breitbart News reported that eight House Republicans joined the Democrats to support Joe Biden’s suspension of United States tariffs on suspected Chinese-manufactured solar panels. 

Last 2022, Biden announced a 24-month suspension of tariffs on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. 

The suspension came despite Biden’s Commerce Department official's discovery that the solar panels in question were actually manufactured in China. The China-based BYD based in Hong Kong is said to have rerouted its products through Cambodia, Thailand, and  Vietnam for the sole purpose of evading the tariffs.

Biden being soft on China should come not to be a surprise to anyone.

The president of the watchdog Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer, revealed that in 2013 Hunter and Joe flew on Air Force Two to China two weeks before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with the CCP operated Bank of China.  Schweizer exposed numerous lucrative shady deals that benefited the Biden family and Hunter’s businesses, where Joe appeared to have a ten percent stake in a company formed in partnership with top CCP officials.  

We must also remember that Joe Biden’s Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, received more than $54 million from individuals or entities linked to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) from 2014 to 2019.

It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that the attempt to waive tariffs happened with Biden’s knowledge that solar panels were made in China but were re-routed to other countries to evade tariffs.

It is important that the names of the eight House Republicans who backed Biden’s attempted tariff waivers be known and remembered.

Five among these Republicans happen to be from New York; the rest are from Utah, Kentucky, and Iowa

• ·        Rep. John Curtis (R-UT)
• ·        Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY)
• ·        Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY)
• ·        Rep. Nicholas LaLota (R-NY)
• ·        Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY)
• ·        Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
• ·        Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA)
• ·        Rep. Marcus Molinaro (R-NY)

Fortunately, not all House Republicans are of this kind. 

Just yesterday, 209 House Republicans and 12 Democrats passed a resolution to reverse Biden’s tariff suspension.

Groups representing American manufacturers praised the passage of the resolution.

As expected, Joe Biden, or perhaps more accurately Biden's handlers, have vowed to veto the resolution if it passes the Democrat-controlled Senate, claiming the tariff suspension is necessary to fight -- you guessed right -- “the climate crisis.” It's amazing that Biden's handlers could not come up with a better excuse.

Now let's look at the bigger picture.

A study by The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, revealed the following

“Growing trade deficits with China are the largest single cause of growing manufacturing trade deficits and jobs losses. 

“Between 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), and 2018, growing U.S.–China trade deficits eliminated 3.7 million total U.S. jobs, including 2.8 million jobs lost in manufacturing alone. 

“Although the U.S. trade deficit with China fell by $34.4 million (10.0%) in 2020, China’s total trade surplus with the world increased by 27% in 2020 to $535 billion, driven by surging exports of medical supplies and electronic goods.”

The EPI study revealed that China is evading U.S. trade restrictions and tariffs by shipping products through other countries.

In 1985, before China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.

This rapidly escalating U.S. trade deficit has caused a once- vibrant US manufacturing sector to look like a graveyard.   The primary group affected by this is working-class Americans.

The Democrats, who claim to be the sole custodians of compassion and empathy for the downtrodden, once again proved their hypocrisy. None were concerned or affected by the damages they caused. The destruction of the US manufacturing sector was the destruction of the lives and dreams of US workers and their families who are the backbone of the US economy who made the nation the economic superpower it is.

It is not that the Democrats or the Republicans in D.C. didn’t understand what they were doing – they just didn’t care and more importantly, they may be benefiting pecuniarily via quid pro deals.

Washington, D.C. has had a convenient arrangement: power was transferred from a Republican George H. W. Bush to a Democrat Bill Clinton to a Republican George W. Bush to Democrat Barack Obama.  Both parties used social issues such as gay marriage and abortion to deceive the people into thinking that they were different, but when it came to key issues such as enabling China and disabling the US manufacturing sector, they all stood together.

Donald Trump was the only US President who actually used the US’s advantage as a market to bring some kind of leveling and fairness in the playing field.  The tariffs imposed on foreign goods by President Trump resulted in a form resurgence for the manufacturing sector in the US.

Trump’s trade war with China began in 2018, when he applied tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese-made goods. He also imposed duties on more items after Beijing retaliated with tariffs on some American-made products.

At the beginning of 2020, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping came to an agreement, signing what’s known as the Phase One agreement. 

China agreed to increase its purchases of US goods and agricultural products – setting an ambitious target of buying $200 billion more than it did before the trade war began; in exchange there was an agreement to reduce the tariff.

Studies revealed that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about ten million American jobs while boosting domestic output.

If the election had been fair and Trump had won the second term, Trump would have made significant gains for the US manufacturing sector.

Perhaps he still can from January 2025.

Back to the House Republicans who side with the Democrats to go soft on China.

It is said that an unreliable ally is much worse than a sworn enemy. You expect the enemy to act against your interests, but the real damage occurs when you the ally depended upon joining your adversary for personal gains and stabs you in the back. Beyond the loss, the treachery is both shocking and unforgivable.

Perhaps House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who, has shown great promise during his tenure so far, will reprimand his colleagues and discipline them.

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