Maxwell School News

Professor of Economics Mary Lovely says targets for exports of farm goods, factory products, and crude oil were always going to be a stretch, and that the coronavirus pandemic has made things worse.

"We're in a truce in the ongoing trade conflict between the U.S. and China," says Professor of Economics Mary Lovely.

"The key issue is how long the trade disruptions between U.S. and China last," says Professor of Economics Mary Lovely. "The longer they go on, the more the old networks atrophy and new networks get solidified."

"We have to remember that every other country in the world will be doing business with China. That puts our companies at a severe disadvantage in doing business," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"We’re going to see permanently higher prices because the system as a whole will be less efficient," says Professor of Economics Mary Lovely. "President Trump’s actions are cementing firms’ view that this is going to go on for a long time."

"I think whatever jobs are created by President Trump's war on global supply chains are going to be dwarfed by losses in the U.S. export sectors," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"It looks like there was a level of specificity that China wasn’t willing to accept and a level of ambiguity that the Trump administration wasn’t willing to accept," Mary Lovely, professor emerita of economics, told the New York Times.

Chance Briggs '97 M.P.A., country director for Save The Children in Mozambique, says "the Southern hemisphere has never seen anything like this in a natural disaster." He assesses that "right now, funding is the urgent need...If we don't get people quickly back on their feet now, they will have trouble reconstructing their houses, reconstructing their livelihoods."

Mary Lovely, professor of economics, notes that some Chinese goods have no alternative sourcing, and even when workarounds from other countries are available, they are often not perfect substitutes and lead to higher pricing for U.S. companies.

According to Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion, politicians are looking for quick fixes because of their short terms in office and public health in the U.S. too often treats problems after they appear. "If we were to invest similar money into revitalizing social infrastructure and economic infrastructure and our educational system we would see long term benefits," she says. 

"People who shop at Walmart or Target are going to be hit harder than people who buy their toaster ovens from Williams Sonoma or can afford to get products from a higher-income country," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"My sense is that he's relying on some stock phrases that he pulls out again and again, especially when he's called on to make a statement about an issue that perhaps he hasn't done a lot of research on or doesn't have a lot of information on," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science. 

"The companies that use steel, like aluminum can manufacturers, or companies that make steel vats for pharmaceuticals or the dairy industry, they're going to be hurt by this," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

Mary Lovely, professor of economics, says that after two rounds of retaliatory tariffs by China, U.S. ham and various other pork products now face massive tariffs—between 62 and 70 percent. "In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported zero weekly export sales of pork to China," she says. "So our exports to the country have pretty much collapsed."

"We’ve never seen anything like this," Mary Lovely told the Associated Press. Lovely recently spoke with multiple news outlets about the trade war between the U.S. and China.