President Trump considers imposing retaliatory economic sanctions on Chinese products and services in direct response to China's theft and infringement of U.S. intellectual property. Trump's retaliatory trade sanctions may involve tariffs, quotas, embargoes, and other restrictions on China's investments in U.S. companies. This punitive penalty arises as part of a recent Trade Act Section 301 probe into China's recent regulations that induce U.S. multinational corporations to establish onshore IT data centers. These regulations force unfair intellectual property and technology transfer from these U.S. multinational corporations to their Chinese counterparts. Without such technology transfer, the use and implementation of U.S. patents and trademarks would otherwise involve egregious infringement at the expense of U.S. firms and other innovators.

Recent empirical evidence suggests that this unfair technology transfer may be the root cause of both billions of dollar losses in corporate revenue as well as millions of job losses in America. In addition to intellectual property theft and infringement, the Trump administration also accuses China of currency manipulation. Over the years, China has been accumulating substantial dollar reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds for better renminbi devaluation. This deliberate devaluation leads to more competitive Chinese export prices and thus better low-cost product sales abroad. The Trump administration needs to consider retaliatory trade sanctions on China in order to eradicate trade deficits with better fiscal discipline.