{"text":[[{"start":8.34,"text":"The writer is senior fellow and director of Trade and Economic Statecraft at the Brookings Institution"}],[{"start":14.44,"text":"Worsening trade tensions between the US and Canada have diverted attention away from the debate about the Trump administration’s use of Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to reshape the US tariff schedule. Many have asked whether it can legally do so. But a different question needs to be considered: what kind of trade policy results when Section 301 becomes the foundation of the tariff regime?"}],[{"start":39.2,"text":"The answer lies in the statute’s basic logic. Section 301 of the Trade Act empowers the US Trade Representative to investigate and respond to specific foreign trading practices judged to be unfair. Tariffs are supposed to be a remedy. They are not supposed to be the objective."}],[{"start":56.08,"text":"A tariff regime built on Section 301 ensures future administrations will repeatedly revisit not only the tariffs but the purpose they are meant to serve. Congress constructed the legislation so that Section 301 actions terminate after four years, unless a beneficiary requests continuation; if one does, then USTR conducts a review of the action. This means successive administrations cannot simply leave tariffs untouched or quietly allow them to lapse."}],[{"start":83.66,"text":"At that four-year point, an administration may want to preserve elements of the tariff structure supported by Section 301, which has largely replaced the “liberation day” tariffs. If that includes tariffs on the EU, Japan or other allies, it will have to decide whether it is willing to stand by findings that these countries are engaged in actionable unfair trade practices. If not, it may be tempted to construct a new Section 301 investigation into different alleged unfair trading practices. In another four years, the next administration would face the same choice."}],[{"start":117.06,"text":"That may be the right design for an enforcement tool aimed at specific unfair practices. But it is a peculiar choice for the basic architecture of US trade policy. Build a tariff regime on these foundations, and the result is a trade policy that is structurally unsettled."}],[{"start":132.44,"text":"For some, the flexibility to revisit the tariff regime may seem useful. But it has a cost. Every four-year review creates another opportunity for industries to seek protection and for political bargaining over who receives it."}],[{"start":144.62,"text":"That uncertainty also undercuts one of the central arguments for tariffs, the idea that they will encourage investment in domestic production, strengthen supply chains and reduce economic vulnerabilities. If tariffs are meant to influence decade-long decisions, today’s rate is only part of the equation. Companies with money on the line need the policy framework to remain stable for those decisions to pay off."}],[{"start":168.22,"text":"A structurally unsettled trade policy also makes it harder for the US to persuade other countries to organise around its strategic priorities."}],[{"start":176.64,"text":"Whether the objective is building critical minerals supply chains or encouraging the development of competing technologies, success depends on partners believing US trade policy won’t later be reconstructed in ways that compromise their efforts to do the same. But trading partners should not simply conclude the US has become unreliable. They have a stake in helping build a co-operative alternative to the cycle of unilateral executive action."}],[{"start":202.28,"text":"Many in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, believe the US needs a fundamentally different approach to trade in an era of rising geopolitical tension and rapidly changing technology. That debate is worth having, both in Washington and among its partners. Section 301 cannot answer that question. A tariff regime built on Section 301, a statute that is repeatedly revisited through successive investigations and reviews, sidesteps that debate rather than resolving it."}],[{"start":231.9,"text":"The real question is not whether Section 301 can support a new tariff regime. It is whether the US is prepared to decide what that regime is for."}],[{"start":245.56,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1788233509_7237.mp3"}