The Economic Impact of Proposed Tariffs on China and the US

The rhetoric around the US elections is heating up, and tariffs have become a central theme – to rally for or against. In Part II of our roundtable discussion, our chief economists break down national and global implications of this policy lever.

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Seth Carpenter: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Global Chief Economist.

On this special episode of the podcast, we're going to continue our third roundtable discussion with Morgan Stanley's economists from around the world as we enter the fourth quarter of 2024.

It's Tuesday, October 8th at 10am in New York.

Jens Eisenschmidt: And 3pm in London.

Seth Carpenter: All right, so yesterday we covered topics about central banks, inflation, reflation, deflation, China's stimulus policies – a whole set of things. But today I really want to focus on the upcoming US elections and some of the possible implications around the world.

As of this recording, the race between Vice President Harris and former President Trump is essentially in a dead heat and it has left policymakers and market participants with few clear signals about what policy is going to be going forward.

One key policy lever is tariffs; and so Diego, I’m going to come to you. What has the US team said about tariffs and what it might mean for the economy?

Diego Anzoategui: Yes, I think the three key policy levers to consider are tariffs, as you mentioned Seth, immigration policy, and fiscal policy. Tariffs, in particular, are basically a presidential authority, so the outcome of the election is going to be very important there.

Fiscal policy will depend not only on the White House, but also on the Congress, which most polls suggest that it will be split between the two parties. So, we don't expect much there. And immigration policy is tricky because if you take a look at the data, immigration flows have been decreasing. And the key question here is whether the new policy is going to affect that already decreasing path

Seth Carpenter: For tariffs, I know that we've published -- that there's both a boost to inflation that can come, but also a hit to economic growth. And that boost to inflation likely comes first.

The logic is tariffs are taxes, and so they should be seen as a tax on consumption spending -- but also, on domestic CapEx spending and domestic manufacturing because a lot of the imports that are under tariff are either capital goods or intermediate goods that go into manufacturing here in the US.

Diego Anzoategui: Yeah, that's right. Of course, the details will matter a lot. So, suffice it to say, there's a lot of uncertainty.

Seth Carpenter: Okay, that's fair. Chetan, let me come back to you on this. This topic is particularly important for China's economy since the Trump campaign has pledged tariffs of up to 60 per cent on China, and then 10 per cent globally -- something that our public policy team believes could be a driver of a broader decoupling.

You've written a lot about tariffs, tariff structure, what it means for China, the deflationary path. Could you just elaborate a little bit for us?

Chetan Ahya: Yeah, absolutely. I think the timing of this tariff, if they do come up in November or sometime in 2025, couldn't have been coming at a worse time for China. As we've been discussing, China has already been going through this challenge of deflation, and tariffs essentially will mean additional deflationary pressures on China.

So that is one source of impact that we would be watching. The other would be what is the impact on global corporate confidence and China's corporate confidence. That can have additional negative impact in form of slowdown in investment. And one other thing to keep in mind is that in 2018-2019, China could respond, in terms of fiscal and monetary easing and offset some of the downside that came from tariffs. But in this cycle, considering the state of the property market, it would be very difficult for China to reflate that property market demand and offset the downside from tariff.

So essentially, we think the tariffs, if they come in this time, could be far more challenging for China, particularly for deflation management.

Seth Carpenter: Of course, tariffs are global and the Trump campaign has talked about not just tariffs on China. So, Jens, let me come to you. Maybe there are some implications here for Europe as well.

During former President Trump's administration, there were targeted tariffs that, met challenges of the WTO and retaliatory tariffs on American exports to Europe. Looking back on what happened in 2018 and 2019, what do you think could be ahead in the event that former President Trump wins the election again?

Jens Eisenschmidt: So, the episode in 2018 could be actually a template, even though it's probably limited in scopes because tariffs were much more limited that were applied back then. We've talked about around 1 per cent of total American-EU imports that back then were targeted; while now we are really talking about, at least in terms of proposals, everything.

So first to notice that when back then the impact was limited, it will be a little bit bigger now simply because more is targeted. And we think it could be around 30 basis points, shaping around 30 basis points, of European GDP.

Again, that's a very crude measure that depends on many things in particular on also the retaliation. And here for instance, we think EU would, of course, like last time, file a complaint with the World Trade Organization, you know, as a basis for then following negotiations around these tariffs.

Then, the EU would, of course, be looking into what type of tariffs it could put in terms of retaliation on US products entering the EU. And here we would observe first that a lot of that is actually oil, and it's unlikely that you would want to put tariffs on oil -- or more broadly energy goods. So also, natural gas.

Then that means we would look for the next product categories. But here, I think it's not so clear; no single product category stands out. But what stands out is that the US has a surplus in services exports to the EU. And here the EU could, in theory at least, come up with a strategy to retaliate through services regulation. Again, that would need to be seen, once we see these tariffs being implemented. But that certainly would be a road for the EU to take.

Seth Carpenter: Thanks Jens. It makes a lot of sense. And gentlemen, I want to thank you all for a terrific discussion today.

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