section_path: Background/Trump administration's complaints
section_name: Trump administration's complaints
paragraph_text: Trump administration's complaints
  
  Donald Trump's first noted advocacy for tariffs was prompted by Japanese economic success in the 1980s, arguing that the U.S. trade deficit was a burden and that tariffs would promote domestic manufacturing that would keep the United States from being "ripped off" by its trading partners. In early 2011, he stated that because China has manipulated their currency, "it is almost impossible for our companies to compete with Chinese companies." Imposing tariffs was subsequently a major plank of his successful 2016 presidential campaign.
  
  In the 2016 US presidential election, Trump ran on a protectionist economic platform. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to reduce the US trade deficit with China, which he attributed to unfair trade practices, such as intellectual property theft and lack of access by US companies to the Chinese market. Trade advisor Peter Navarro was given an office on the 14th floor of Trump Tower, where he worked on economic plans that heavily focused on starting a trade war against China. As president, in August 2017, he directed the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate Chinese economic practices. The resulting report, issued in March 2018, attacked many aspects of Chinese economic policy, focusing particularly on alleged technology transfer, which the report stated cost the US economy $225 billion and $600 billion annually. Following the issuing of the report, Trump ordered the imposition of tariffs on Chinese products, the filing of a WTO case against China and restrictions on Chinese investment in high-tech sectors of the US economy. Navarro was influential in pushing Trump to start the trade war; in his 2021 book In Trump Time, Navarro wrote that he urged Trump to go "full Sudden Zen" and start an all-out trade war against China.
  
  In supporting tariffs as president, he said that China was costing the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year because of unfair trade practices. After imposing tariffs, he denied entering into a trade war, saying the "trade war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S." He said that the U.S. has a trade deficit of $500 billion a year, with intellectual property (IP) theft costing an additional $300 billion. "We cannot let this continue," he said. Former White House Counsel, Jim Schultz, said that "through multiple presidential administrations – Clinton, Bush and Obama – the United States has naively looked the other way while China cheated its way to an unfair advantage in the international trade market."
  
  In August 2017, Robert Lighthizer investigated China's alleged unfair trade practices. According to the administration, the Chinese government's reforms have been minimal and have not been fair and reciprocal: "After years of U.S.-China dialogues that produced minimal results and commitments that China did not honor, the United States is taking action to confront China over its state-led, market-distorting forced technology transfers, intellectual property practices, and cyber intrusions of U.S. commercial networks."
  
  Technology is considered the most important part of the U.S. economy. According to U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer, China maintains a policy of "forced technology transfer," along with practicing "state capitalism," including buying U.S. technology companies and using cybertheft to gain technology. As a result, officials in the Trump administration were, by early 2018, taking steps to prevent Chinese state-controlled companies from buying American technology companies and were trying to stop American companies from handing over their key technologies to China as a cost of entering their market. According to political analyst Josh Rogin: "There was a belief that China would develop a private economy that would prove compatible with the WTO system. Chinese leadership has made a political decision to do the opposite. So now we have to respond." Lighthizer said that the value of the tariffs imposed was based on U.S. estimates of the actual economic damage caused by alleged theft of intellectual property and foreign-ownership restrictions that require foreign companies to transfer technology.
  
  Over half of the members of the American Chamber of Commerce in the People's Republic of China thought that leakage of intellectual property was an important concern when doing business there.
  
  Initiating steel and aluminum tariff actions in March 2018, Trump said "trade wars are good, and easy to win," but as the conflict continued to escalate through August 2019, Trump stated, "I never said China was going to be easy."
  
  Peter Navarro, White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director, explained that the tariffs are "purely defensive measures" to reduce the trade deficit. He says that the cumulative trillions of dollars that Americans transfer overseas as a result of yearly deficits are then used by those countries to buy America's assets, as opposed to investing that money in the U.S. "If we do as we're doing... those trillions of dollars are in the hands of foreigners that they can then use to buy up America."