By Andy Brack
Imagine my surprise early on April 22 when I saw a column in The New York Times about China, tariffs and trade by British geopolitical analyst and author James Crabtree.
“I know that guy,” I thought, immediately remembering a tall and lanky graduate of the London School of Economics who volunteered for a couple of months during my ill-fated (but fun) 2000 congressional campaign. “And now he’s writing in the Times, Foreign Policy and all sorts of publications.”
So I reached out that morning to congratulate Crabtree. Turns out he was in China where the day was ending. Surprisingly, he responded within just a few minutes and agreed to answer a few questions about the unstable state of the world today, particularly in trade. In his Times column, he wrote about how steep tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump would pay off – but for China, not the United States.
“South Carolina will find it harder to attract investment – and harder to trade and export – because other countries will see the U.S. turning inwards and against trade, and decide to take their investment and trade elsewhere,” Crabtree said.
And with the Port of Charleston being a top 10 port nationally, that will be a big deal, especially since about 20% of the port’s 12.2 million metric tons of imports were from China, according to FreightWaves price reporting service.
“There will hopefully still be a globalized, trading world — with Europe and East Asia at its heart — but the U.S. will play less of a role in it. And obviously, ordinary people in South Carolina are going to pay a whole lot more for a lot of things they buy as prices rise sharply and economic growth slows down.”
It will cost more, he said, for the new Nintendo switch, toys or a basic iPhone.
“Supply chains will adapt, and the U.S. can import toys from other countries, but they will cost more and often be less good.”
Crabtree, who has a new book coming out soon on the U.S. struggle for primacy in the Pacific, predicted that if the tariff war continues, the U.S. will do less trade overall “but relatively more with other countries which are not China, so the trade landscape will be less efficient and more complex.”
There have been basic global trade problems that needed fixing before the rush to slap on tariffs, such as how the U.S. has become too reliant on some Chinese goods. “But the tariffs are not a good way to achieve this objective, and they have lots of very damaging side-effects.”
Crabtree, now back in London with his family after serving as bureau chief for the Financial Times in India and head of an international think tank in Singapore, says his time in 2000 in South Carolina was critical to his career path.
“I was young and green, and knew very little about political campaigns,” he said, adding that he learned the importance of retail politics. “I loved Charleston and the Lowcountry, too, which I’d explore on the weekends. There aren’t too many British people who’ve been inside a Piggly Wiggly or visited the Hunley museum or eaten scrapple. (I wasn’t vegan back then.)”
He said he also found being here to be intellectually fascinating.
“Living in South Carolina was one the first times I’d really lived and worked in a place which felt genuinely foreign and different, despite speaking the same language (just about).”
Volunteering here also planted a seed in his mind to return for graduate school at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he met his wife. He also realized in the Palmetto State that he “somehow wanted to travel and learn for work. This became the impetus for later becoming a foreign correspondent, and living abroad in Asia for a dozen years.”
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send it to feedback@statehousereport.com.
