In a new paper published by Mr Navarro’s office in the White House, titled “The Great Transshipment Scam”, dozens of countries from Japan to Jordan stand accused of abetting a Chinese plot to dodge American tariffs. IN G.K. CHESTERTON’S parable of the fence, those eager to tear down seemingly useless structures are urged to understand why they were built in the first place. Chesterton’s fence has long been received wisdom among American conservatives of a certain age, but Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s chief trade ideologue, seems to have missed the memo. Absurd as this claim is, the paper is nevertheless a vivid exposition of the Trump administration’s muddled thinking on trade.
Haggling over ROOs for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country trade deal scuttled by Mr Trump in 2017, took the better part of a decade, notes Deborah Elms of the Hinrich Foundation, a think-tank in Singapore.
The traditional legal test is “substantial transformation”, requiring a “fundamental change in form, appearance, nature or character”, according to American trade authorities. Most free-trade deals include painstakingly negotiated “rules of origin” (ROO) for each product line. This is not a clean distinction.
