How Trump’s Tariffs Promote Hate at Home
Others, like one in the San Francisco Examiner from April 27, 1982, complained that “Japanese scoff at U.S. complaints of unfair trade practices,” arguing that Japan was unjustly taking advantage of Americans.
Talk of a trade war with Japan fueled anti-Asian racism at home. On the night of June 19, 1982, two white men in Detroit—Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler plant supervisor, and his stepson Michael Nitz—violently murdered Chinese American Vincent Chin. Chin, a Detroit draftsman, was celebrating his bachelor party at a local strip club. A dancer at the club later testified that Ebens shouted at Chin, “It’s because of you little motherfuckers we’re out of work.” Nitz, who was recently laid off from his job as an autoworker, pinned down Chin while Ebens beat him with a baseball bat. Chin died from his injuries at Henry Ford Hospital four days later.
When Ebens and Nitz were tried for Chin’s murder, Wayne County Judge Charles Kaufman refused to sentence the two to prison, instead sentencing them to three years’ probation and a $3,000 fine each. During sentencing, Kaufman said Ebens and Nitz were not “the kind of men you send to jail.” The murder and the subsequent trial became a turning point for the Asian American movement, mobilizing thousands to protest the unjust ruling. (A year ago in June, the Detroit Free Press reported that the FBI quietly released its entire file on the Vincent Chin case. You can read more about it here.)
The full-blown xenophobia promoted by the Trump administration is nevertheless unique and unprecedented in American history. Back in 2018, Tobita Chow wrote for In These Times that the first Trump administration had already begun tying xenophobia to the first trade war: “Trump already started down this road by proposing restrictions on visas for people from China as part of his ‘trade’ fight, while Chris Wray, Trump’s FBI Director, recently all but admitted that he is racially profiling Chinese-Americans and Chinese immigrants.” Similarly, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that while it was possible to be “tough on China” back in 2010, when the U.S. rate of unemployment was at 9 percent, the 2018 trade war with China offered nothing but theatrics and economic instability.
While the first Trump administration initiated a trade war with China, the current tariff policies against China build off Trump’s existing anti-Chinese rhetoric from the Covid-19 era. Umemoto has observed how Trump’s current tariff war now recycles his same anti-Asian rhetoric used during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The Trump tariffs come on the heels of the tragic pattern of anti-Asian violence that swept the country with the outbreak of Covid-19 and anti-immigrant scapegoating even prior to 2020,” says Umemoto. “The tariff war has hit many nations, but none more caustically than China. When Covid-19 was coined by Trump as the ‘China virus,’ anti-Asian hate began to spike. And with the tariff war, we sense resentment rising again.”
