Yeah, “The Mainstream Media” has problems
A couple of weeks ago the Trump administration decided, after recommendation from the bipartisan U.S. International Trade Commission, to raise tariffs on washing machines and solar cells. If you’re like me and simply read the NPR and New York Times (or some other popular media outlet) article then you probably thought this was a unilateral move by the Trump Administration independent of the previous administration. You also probably thought this was Trump keeping a campaign promise and indicative of future protectionist policy.
If that was you, then you were pretty much wrong.
A friend pointed me to an episode of the podcast The Indicator entitled Obama, Trump, and Trade that explains the tariffs, with context. To sum up (although I’d encourage you to listen to the episode because it’s only 5 minutes) the tariffs are a basic extension of Obama administration policy. The Obama administration set tariffs on China for solar cells and South Korea for washing machines. To get around these tariffs Chinese companies simply built the solar cells in Korea and shipped them from there, and South Korean companies did the same with washing machines (shipping them from China).
So the tariffs that were previously implemented were never really effective. In simple terms, Trump is attempting to make Obama era tariffs actually do what they were intended to do. They also decrease over time and (according to The Indicator creators) are likely to have little effect on the economy. Again, listen to the episode if you think I’m being lopsided.
Neither of the main articles from NPR or the New York Times make mention of Obama’s policies. And, in my humble non-expert opinion, it’s the job of journalists to give proper context. The headlines read “Trump Slaps Tariffs On Imported Solar Panels And Washing Machines” and “Trump Slaps Steep Tariffs on Foreign Washing Machines and Solar Products” for NPR and the New York Times respectively.
They could easily have been “Trump Tries to Make Obama Era Tariffs Serve Original Purpose”.
Now, you can argue that the tariffs are a bad idea, and that may be true. But we expect arguments like that from the opinion section, not the news section. This is why, I believe, all the criticism the mainstream media gets from the right is not completely unwarranted. Approaching this topic as they did doesn’t help their cause.
(If you find this interesting you should go look at the data Pew gathered on the reporting of the Trump administration’s first year. You’ll find it was quite different from coverage of the first year of the Obama presidency.)
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