A Justification For War

A trade war, anyway. The Chinese government is in a huff about the U.S. government's institution of 25% import duties on Chinese-made automobile tires. China complains that the imposition of substantial tariffs amounts to protectionism, and has launched its own review of U.S. exports to China.

The Administration apparently imposed a lesser tariff than was recommended by U.S. International Trade Commission. Setting aside the political ramifications and posturing, both internationally and domestic, here is one reason to support the move: Chinese tires are garbage. In this recent tire test, the Chinese tires fared far worse than their competitors. Some revealing analytical notes from the article:

Consistently finishing last in all of the performance categories, the Ling Longs’ dry autocross performance was so far behind the other tires’ that we had to round its score up to zero to keep it from being negative.

Things got worse in the wet, where slip-and-slide behavior required a conservative effort to stay between the cones. The Ling Longs were a full five seconds off the autocross pace and needed 22 more feet—1.5 3-series car-lengths—to stop from 50 mph than did the best Hankooks.

On the street loop, we were irritated by a low-speed drone ...

... even though they cost half the price of many competing tires, they scored less than half the points of even the eighth-place tire. To us, that doesn’t qualify as a value ...

(I have read tire reviews like this one for years. Even though magazines like Car and Driver are generally thought to be under the considerable influence of the automakers they cover (and advertise), I trust the integrity of the blind testing methodology of tire tests like this one. It is not a perfect system, and may not be sufficiently rigorous to measure up to academic standards for true blind testing, but for the limited purpose for which these sorts of tests are offered - a direct, largely objective comparison between similar consumer goods - I think the tests provide useful information.)

There is something to be said for allowing the marketplace to discover this on its own and make the appropriate and inevitable corrections to the market share of the Chinese producers. However, China's ability and intention to manufacture products at a substantially lower sales price that its competitors, coupled with dramatically worse performance, gives plausible justification for imposing punitive tariffs. The decades-old jokes about substandard quality of products made in China (jokes that even my seven-year-old son makes, without parroting his parents) are amusing when referring to household knicknacks. The situation becomes a whole lot less amunsing when your family's safety depends on the products in question. As China climbs the ladder of the global consumer products market, producing tires and entire cars for sale outside of its own borders, China will have to learn, one way or another, to bring its products up to basic standards of quality that, frankly, they don't reach yet. (Go here for a review of a new Chinese-made car's utter failure during a European crash test.)

Once, lawsuits were an effective tool to force manufacturers to improve the quality of their products. Like them or not, consumer-interest legislation had an undeniable effect on the design of consumer goods, most of it positive in the area of safety. I would not want to be the next person to attempt to sue a Chinese company for negligent design or manufacturing, however. As a practical matter, the tort system simply will not be effective against Chinese interests for the relatively near future. A trade war may be the best, first method to force Chinese manufacturers to understand how products must be made for Western consumption.