Trump trade policy: 4 years of high drama. Limited results.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump spent four years upending seven decades of American trade policy.

In what became his defining economic act, Trump launched a trade war with China.

Notably, Biden hasn’t said whether he would retain the tariffs Trump imposed on about $360 billion in Chinese goods — well over half of what Beijing ships to the U.S.

Gone are hopes that the United States might coax China into curbing its unfair policies through patient negotiations or by bringing disputes to the World Trade Organization.

“One of the reasons we got to where we were with Trump is that we exhausted the other options,” said Wendy Cutler, a former trade negotiator who is now at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Before Trump, American policymakers had mainly promoted ever-freer global trade, governed by WTO rules.

Under Trump, freer trade — long a pillar of Republican policy in the United States — was out.

To that end, he fought with China, taxed foreign steel and aluminum and forced Canada and Mexico to renegotiate a North American trade pact, among other things.

Predictably, China and other countries retaliated with tariffs of their own, many of them targeting American farmers.

Contrary to his assertions, too, Trump’s tariffs have been paid by American importers, not foreign countries.

Talan Products, a $50 million-a-year metal stamping company in Cleveland, said it missed out on two major projects because Trump’s tariffs raised the cost of its imported parts, allowing Indian competitors to underprice Talan’s bids.

His revamped North American trade pact took effect only July 1