U.S. President ’s practice of improving tariffs on China’ s transmission and US products will destroy the global supply chain that creates value and weaken the United States and the global economy.
The trade war ended again, and the United States fired heavy artillery again.After the weak hope of alleviating the conflict between the United States and China in the past one or two weeks, the US President Donald Bull; Donald Trump imposed a 10%tariff on a US $ 200 billion Chinese -American transmission product.Coupled with the previous tariff measures, this means that Trump's tariff measures will cover nearly half of China ’s US -American products.
Given that it will be regarded as a domestic pressure to be responded, Beijing has stated that it will start back.Although China can increase tariffs from relatively small imports from the United States, there are many other retaliation methods in China, including the days of making American companies operating in China.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Bull; Steven Mnuchin has recently restarted the attempt to talk to China.The status of trade hawks led by the White House high -level trading consultant Peter Bull;This is a shame and a problem.
Different from Trump's complaints on other economies (EUs) and the United States' trading partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Mexico and Canada), many of his criticism of China is reasonable.China far from deviating from becoming the track of becoming a market economy; other member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) originally thought that China would take this road after joining the WTO in 2001.
The goal of the "Made in China 2025" is to achieve global leadership in the high -tech industry.This allows the central and local governments and state -owned enterprises to have more intervention permits.They are distorting the market through protective regulations and stealing technology from foreign companies operating in China.
However, in addition to some restrictions on China's investment in the United States, Trump is relatively small in directly solving these problems.His solution to the 21st century protectionism is to use the trading instruments of the previous two centuries and adopt the form of tariffs on goods.
It is not easy to pressure China to weaken its anti -competitive behavior, but it can try.There are ready -made allies in the United States MDash; mdash; such as Japan and the European Union MDASH; MDASH; can be united: These three trading giants have proposed a three -sided initiative.In addition to other influences, it will mean to work hard through the WTO mechanism, rather than weakening the agency by hindering its dispute resolution mechanism as Trump is doing.In fact, China is okay to comply with the WTO decision.
On Tuesday, the European Union officially proposed a series of WTO reform proposals to try to resolve some concerns about the United States for the agency.With Washington's cooperation, this initiative is expected to advance significantly.Without US cooperation, the European Union's plan (may also include the WTO itself) will wither.
However, Trump hugs a wrong belief, that is, narrowing the bilateral trade deficit is the central policy goal, and trade (not macroeconomic policy) is a way to achieve this goal.In fact, according to his own very narrow measurement standards, US presidents may win the trade war against China.But at the same time, he will destroy the global supply chain of creative value and weaken the United States and the global economy.
If China does not agree to Trump's request (almost no signs indicate that China will agree), all China ’s output of US -American products may soon face punitive tariffs.It will mean a huge risk of Washington's health in the global trading system.A better and more cooperative method exists.Unfortunately, the US President seems to have no use of those methods.
Translator/Liang Yanchang
