2 mln US jobs could be affected by China's tariffs lists: Study

“There are a lot of low population rural areas affected by tariffs such as corn tariffs, soybean tariffs, whisky tariffs. And there are areas that are more urbanized affected by tariffs such as tariffs on airplanes or pharmaceuticals. It hits broad cross section of the US economy and really the majority of the counties in the United States are affected in some way.”

--Robert Maxim, Senior Research Analyst at Brookings

A study by Washington-based think tank, Brookings, is warning that some 2 millions US jobs could be affected if the US side goes through with its tariff threats.

Robert Maxim, Senior Research Analyst on the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, talks to China Plus. [Photo: China Plus/Liu Kun]

The Brookings analysis is warning the impact is likely to hit the so-called US heartland, which is a major voter base for the Republicans, which currently control all three branches of the elected US government.

For more on the impact of the trade dispute, CRI's Washington correspondent Liu Kun sat down Robert Maxim, one of the researchers involved in the Brookings study.

Q: First could you please tell us what are the major findings of this stydy?

A: So (in) our finding, the top line number is we have roughly two million US jobs that could be impacted by the two rounds of tariffs. One thing I want to emphasize is that it is not any prediction of the number of jobs that could be lost in the US, rather what we are looking at is the number of potential jobs affected within the industries that are targeted by the tariffs. What we found are those industries that kind of spread throughout the country. They are both in rural, urban areas; they are in areas that voted for Hillary Clinton and areas voting for President Trump. Overall, what we saw was about 52 percent of individual jobs exposed were in areas voted for President Trump and 48 percent were in areas voted for Hillary Clinton. What you see there is there are a lot of low population rural areas, a lot of farming areas that are areas that supported President Trump; they are affected by tariffs such as corn tariffs, soybean tariffs, whisky tariffs. And there are areas that are more urbanized and tended to vote for Hillary Clinton; they are affected by tariffs such as tariffs on airplanes (like) Boeing in the Washington State or the tariffs on pharmaceuticals which tend to be concentrated in more urbanized areas. So what we saw is that there is depending on the industry; it hits broad cross section of the US economy and really the majority of the counties in the United States are affected in some way.

Q: In general how do you think the life of American people will be influenced by the tariff lists not only by China but also by the United States against China?

A: I think tariff is going to affect you would see (with) two broad impacts. The first is that in certain areas particularly I think in more intermediate industries, the tariffs the US is levying on China would impact the US consumer goods and make them more expensive. They’ve hit or they would hit a lot of intermediate industries that go into the final goods US consumers end purchasing. And on the other side, one of the impacts on American firms and regions that are impacted by Chinese tariffs is they are gonna impact their exports. I mean whether it’s hog farmer in Iowa who does majority of their exports to China (and farmers who) produce soy, produce corn, but also China is a major customer for Boeing and the only real competitor to Boeing right now is Airbus. When you have a duopoly like that, (and) China is a potential major buyer in the future. That would impact down the line the exports and the well-being of that company, which would have a major impact on the region which it’s based. 

Q: How do you comment on the Chinese reaction so far?

A: I think everything they have done has been what most individuals watching the situation expected. The one thing I would know is that it’s clear that (if) China anticipated the US levying tariffs; they would put out within several hours of the US release in their list. It’s clearly a list that’s been thought through in advance. There were broad cross sections of American industries being impacted. There were geographical cross sections being impacted.