CHAD WOLF: America cannot ignore China’s economic attack on US industry
America is under economic attack. For decades, Washington politicians looked the other way while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) quietly flooded our markets with artificially cheap goods, wiping out American jobs and entire industries. Thanks to President Trump, that era of willful blindness is over. But the fight is far from finished.
When you hear the term "dumping", it might not sound like much of a threat. But it is one of the most destructive economic weapons the CCP uses against the United States. Dumping occurs when a country subsidizes the production of a good in order to flood another country with cheap goods to crater their domestic production capacity. The practice is anti-free market because it uses government funding to produce goods beyond consumer demand and distort prices.
While career politicians shrugged and allowed multinational companies to outsource American jobs to Beijing, President Donald Trump said enough. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed the America First Trade Policy Executive Order, directing his administration to review existing tariffs and duties on Chinese goods to ensure they are strong enough to actually stop the cheating. Unlike past administrations, the Trump administration actively fights dumping around the world.
President Trump is taking action. But Communist China is persistent, creative, and patient. The CCP will look for workarounds, shift product categories, route goods through third countries, and probe every gap in our enforcement framework. America must maintain a robust enforcement agenda at the U.S. Trade Representative and continue applying Antidumping and Countervailing Duties to keep international markets fair and hold China to the agreements it has already signed.
The industries under CCP attack represent the backbone of American industry: steel and aluminum, automobiles, critical minerals, fertilizer, food products, lumber, textiles, furniture, and chemicals. These sectors employ tens of millions of Americans. When Chinese companies dump underpriced, subsidized products into our market, American manufacturers cannot compete in an economy that China has decided the rules do not apply to.
This is a deliberate strategy. The CCP's goal is to infiltrate the largest economic markets in the world, take out the competition, and make the United States and Europe dependent on China's manufacturing supply chain.
China controls roughly 60% of the world's rare earth mining and nearly 90% of refining capacity. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum described exactly how Beijing weaponizes that dominance: "They would target that particular mineral, dump a quantity onto the market, drive the price down. And companies, including U.S. companies that were profitable suddenly became unprofitable."
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On steel, China is both the largest producer and exporter in the world, and its exports jumped another 7.5% from 2024 to 2025. The Trump Administration has launched an investigation into structural excess capacity in Chinese steel production, with global excess capacity expected to hit 721 million metric tons by 2027.
China also controls 60% of the world's supply of glyphosate, a chemical critical to herbicide production. If America becomes dependent on China to grow its food, the national security consequences are obvious and alarming.
Even the auto sector is not safe. In 2023, China increased car chassis exports into the EU by 327% to weaken European manufacturing. The U.S. cannot let the same thing happen here.
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The Trump administration has rightfully realized the seriousness of the problem. President Trump has imposed tariffs, launched trade investigations, and put America's economic sovereignty back at the center of U.S. foreign policy. No president in modern history has done more to expose and confront the CCP's rigged trade playbook, and American manufacturers, steelworkers, farmers, and families are better off because of it.
Congress has also given the President powerful tools through Sections 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allow the President to impose tariffs on products being imported with the intent to harm a domestic industry. The Trump administration is using those tools to great effect.
Every time one of Communist China’s dumping schemes goes unchallenged, an American factory is put at risk. Every time enforcement slips, the CCP learns it can push further. Now is not the time for complacency or appeasement. It is time for unity, resolve, and a clear-eyed America First strategy.
President Trump is working to protect American workers from CCP dumping. We must make sure that fight does not get abandoned the moment it becomes inconvenient. China is counting on our attention to fade. We can’t let it.