The Hinrich Foundation published an analysis on how the current White House plan to eliminate de minimis “epitomizes the bipartisan unwillingness to craft a more targeted approach to economic competition with China.” Unsurprisingly, they find data from the National Bureau of Economic Research that shows “ending duty-free e-commerce for small shipments serves to increase prices especially on lower-income American consumers.”
Whether senior members of the Biden administration are genuinely exercised by the risk of US Marines wearing Chinese-made jocks is beside the point. The fact that the administration is using dubious national-security rationalization to protect industries like textiles, which have been in secular decline for decades, is symptomatic of how deeply parochial interests are distorting the formation of sound US economic strategy on China. …
Neither political campaign in the elections has been able to articulate a coherent vision of which goods should be made locally and which should be sourced from friendly jurisdictions, or even which jurisdictions really are "friendly". A considerable proportion of manufactured goods are irrelevant to national security. Most textiles surely are as strategic as yoghurt, which France 20 years ago deemed so to prevent a foreign takeover of dairy giant Danone.