Americans have been paying tariffs on imports from China for decades

The Trump administration imposed large new tariffs on US imports from China starting in 2018. The Biden administration has essentially maintained those tariffs, while extending a few and adding some technology-based restrictions. Former president Donald Trump has since said that his stance brought hundreds of billions of dollars “pouring into our Treasury from China when no other US president had gotten even 10 cents.” The data paint a different picture.
First, the United States collected tariff revenue on Chinese imports in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and in the past three…