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T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019 | 9

The trade war between the United

States and China spiraled out of control

last week, with threats from the United

States of yet more tariffs — this time on

shoes, clothes and cellphones — and a

hasty determination to name China a

currency manipulator at least five years

after it stopped doing so.

China responded by halting pur-

chases of American farm products and

accusing the United States of deliber-

ately destroying the international order.

The stock market plummeted, as fear

grew that there was no limit on Trump’s

willingness to recklessly endanger the

American economy. But there is a limit

— Congress. And unless Congress steps

up, Mr. Trump will continue to flout the

rules.

The Constitution gives Congress, not

the president, the power to impose

tariffs, or taxes on imports. Admittedly,

Congress has handed over a good deal

of that tariff-levying authority to the

president over the years, but there are

still important limits in place that Mr.

Trump seems determined to ignore.

When imposing tariffs, for example,

the usual practice is to give an economic

justification. In April 2018, Mr. Trump’s

trade representative, Robert Lighthizer,

did just that when he announced an

intention to impose tariffs on $50 billion

in goods from China, declaring that

amount to be equal to an expert assess-

ment of the economic harm from China’s

policies and practices. The rationale was

set out in a well-documented report, as

required by Section 301 of the Trade Act

of 1974. But just two days later, without

presenting further evidence, Mr. Trump

threatened to subject $100 billion more

in Chinese imports to a 25 percent tariff.

Two months later, he sought tariffs on

$200 billion worth of more goods from

China and, after that, threatened to

impose tariffs on all Chinese imports.

And lo and behold, that is where we may

well end up on Sept. 1 — with tariffs on

virtually every item imported from

China.

Are there no limits on what the presi-

dent can do?

The Trade Act of 1974, under which

Mr. Trump’s initial tariffs were imposed,

was intended to give the president wide

power to enforce trade agreements and

to respond to unreasonable foreign

practices. But Section 301 of that law

also provides for the

imposition of tariffs

to address a specific

offending act or

practice.

President Trump

appears to be pay-

ing lip service, at

best, to this require-

ment. When Trump

administration officials traveled to

Beijing for negotiations, the top item on

their list of demands was that China buy

more American goods, to reduce the

size of the bilateral trade deficit. But the

trade deficit was not listed among the

“offending acts or policies” outlined for

elimination by the tariffs. And when Mr.

Trump declares (falsely) that China will

pay for the tariffs or proclaims on Twit-

ter that it’s O.K. if no deal is reached

because the United States will gain

billions in tariff revenue, he undermines

any notion that tariffs are in place as

leverage to address grievances.

Congress can take three steps to

assert some control. The most funda-

mental is to change the laws that dele-

gate wide tariff authority to the presi-

dent: Section 301, as well as Section 232

of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, the

International Emergency Economic

Powers Act and the Trading With the

Enemy Act of 1917. Each of them should

be changed to put limits on when, for

how much and for how long the presi-

dent can unilaterally impose tariffs.

There are also steps that Congress

can take right now. It should insist on

bringing our allies, including the Euro-

pean Union, Canada, Mexico and Japan,

into our trade negotiations with China.

Many of them have the same concerns

about China’s trade practices, and could

be asked to join a coalition of countries

to challenge China at the World Trade

Organization. It would be hard even for

China to retaliate against so many

countries at once.

Congress should also insist on regu-

lar briefings — starting now — on the

goals for the negotiations with China. Is

the primary goal the reduction of the

bilateral trade deficit? Stopping the

theft of intellectual property? Ending

the forced transfer of technology? Is

this all a ruse to force the American

economy to be “decoupled” from China?

Or is this just an excuse to build a tariff

wall around the United States?

The mixed messages from the Trump

administration have made it difficult to

reach an agreement. But Congress can

insist that the United States be clear

about what a successful agreement with

China would look like — one that ad-

dresses the true concerns about China’s

trade practices in a manner that will

have made all the pain and the chaos

worth the price.

ANTHONY RUSSO

Congress has

the authority

to limit

President

Trump’s

reckless

policies.

Jennifer A. Hillman

JENNIFER A. HILLMAN, a senior fellow at

the Council on Foreign Relations and a

professor at Georgetown Law Center, is

a former general counsel in the Office of

the United States Trade Representative.

How to stop the trade war madness

The U.S. may

well end up

with tariffs on

virtually every

item imported

from China.

When I was in my early 30s, my hus-

band of four years, partner of nine, left

abruptly in the middle of the night. In

the surreal weeks and months that

followed, I grew increasingly apprehen-

sive about the idea of online dating. I

hadn’t been single in nearly a decade; I

didn’t even have Facebook, let alone a

stockpile of profile pictures or an irre-

pressible texting game.

But I was also a writer who worked

from home, one whose closest friends

were married with children. Meeting

someone “IRL” — as, it turns out, they

say — seemed unlikely at best. And so it

was that, some four months into single-

dom, I gathered the courage to join

OkCupid and head to a wine bar with

Pete, a musician-turned-accountant

whom I chose for his spectacularly

anodyne profile.

Now, over three years and seven

dating apps later, I’ve gone out with 86

men and counting; I know because I

keep a list that reads like free verse

(“David the orphan... Nathaniel bone

broth... Shawn with rainbow tattoo ...

Shane sheepskin sex”). I haven’t met

anyone I’ve liked enough, or who liked

me enough, to cancel my accounts. But I

am nevertheless here to offer a defense

of online dating, not necessarily as a

tool for finding a partner — I have no

idea if the internet will ever yield me

true love — but rather as a world-en-

larging enterprise, and a means of

rebuilding one’s self in the wake of

separation.

Yes, online dating can be deeply

demoralizing, a parade of indignities

that throws into relief not just our self-

absorption and banality, but our nihil-

ism too. If I stumble upon one more man

who seeks a “partner in crime,” one

more “sapiosexual” or “entrepreneur,” I

fear I will stomp on my phone. Worse

still are the car selfies and nephew pics;

the weird proliferation of taco and pizza

emojis; the men who take it upon them-

selves to tell you who youare — “a girl

who takes care of herself,” naturally,

which always reads to me like a thinly-

veiled threat. And above all the ghost-

ing.

You’d think that I’d be used to it by

now, for I’ve been ghosted again and

again, first by Marc after a spontaneous

road trip to Montreal; then by Alex after

what I thought was a fruitful 12th date;

then by Chris after I had nursed him

through an LSD trip; then by Ben after

he had introduced me to his 10-year-old

son. Perhaps I take these vanishings

especially to heart, recalling to me as

they do the unsolved mystery of my

ex-husband’s disappearance. But I

would think that anyonewho finds

herself confronted by such baffling

cowardice must suffer from them. (And

I should acknowledge, too, that I have

also behaved badly at times, failing to

write someone back once real life takes

hold or sending squirmy messages in

lieu of a clean break.)

But for all this, what I’ve gained from

online dating far exceeds what I have

lost. That spectral ex-spouse of mine

used to complain of what he called our

“heteronormative” lifestyle, a term

that made me roll my eyes though I

knew just what he meant: Our lives

had lost their capacity to surprise. I

remember lying in bed and reading the

memoirs of the French writer Blaise

Cendrars; I couldn’t stop marveling at

the boundlessness of that man’s exist-

ence, one that made him a film director,

a beekeeper, a watchmaker and con-

nected him to gangsters and whores.

How narrow was my own existence, I

thought then, and how it continued to

narrow by the day. But to go on dates

with 86 different men is to gain as many

windows on the world; it is to see one’s

vast city and one’s vast self, if only for a

few hours, through the eyes of a strang-

er one would never otherwise have met.

Take, for instance, Date No. 10, which

found me at a Rhode Island pub on a

February evening so brutally cold the

authorities had advised us all to stay

indoors. James was a boat builder,

blonde and slight. We drank the

espresso martinis he had ordered and

argued about welfare; we talked of

fathers. Later we decamped to his

apartment, a flimsy, spartan place that

nevertheless held the most exquisite

furniture, tables he had inlaid with ash

and birch and varnished till they

gleamed. The heat failed in the middle

of the night, and we clung to each other

for warmth as his dog, Bruce, a German

Shepard, curled and recurled at our

feet. As it grew light, he asked me how I

took my coffee and I said that I drank

tea; he returned some time later with a

Styrofoam cup from Dunkin’ Donuts

and a dozen red roses he had bought at

the gas station. It was, he told me, Val-

entine’s Day.

Multiply that evening’s curiosities by

86, and you’ll begin to grasp the poten-

tial of these soul-crushing apps.

Thanks to Hinge and Bumble, I have

dated German poets and Indian

bankers, Australian contractors and

Brazilian waiters. I’ve met United

Nations diplomats and my favorite

movie star’s ex-husband. I have spent a

summer dog-sitting in Los Angeles and

flown to Jamaica for a third date; licked

cocaine off car keys and undressed at

midnight in a Barcelona square. I’ve

had my air- conditioner stolen, inher-

ited an Eames chair, expanded my

music library a hundredfold, and made

a dear friend, who, now that our fledg-

ing romance has failed, will be with me

for life. I have learned about spearfish-

ing and Oceanic art, about life in the

merchant marines and urbanism in late

antiquity. I have learned how to sext,

how to plant tomatoes, how to drink

mate, beat box, and navigate the bars

of Bushwick. I could introduce you to

men who believe in God and men who

live in their cars; men who have slept

with their sisters and others who have

followed the Dead.

And I could tell you so many stories,

stories of poverty and privilege, of

divorce and infidelity, of fatherhood,

forgiveness and the foolhardiness of

studying philosophy when you are the

great-great-nephew of the great Lud-

wig Wittgenstein. I would hardly sug-

gest I lead a life to rival Cendrars’ own

(my two cats have seen to that), but I

havehad adventures.

And as for those ghosters, they have

their purpose too. For it wasn’t long

after reading Cendrars in bed beside my

sleeping spouse that I began to realize

that I was slowly losing track of who I

was and who I wasn’t, of what I believed

and what I didn’t.

The conventional wisdom is that

marriage makes us whole, that it com-

pletes us (as if alone we were unfin-

ished). But as much as I loved being

married, I see now that dilution might

provide a better metaphor. I think of old

organic processes, of oceans tempered

by rain, of mountains rent by wind and

snow, when I think of my creeping

disorientation as a wife, of how the self

in wedlock can be worn away.

Perhaps that’s why, when I first went

Yes, it can be

demoralizing.

It can also

enlarge

your world.

In praise of online dating

LAN TRUONG

Katharine Smyth

S MYTH, PAGE 11

Opinion

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