Trade War with China

PanAsian said:

The thing is the US and world market distortions under "US rules" is what keeps US big money special interests at the top of their domestic totem pole, so it's very much a mirror image situation. Just as some posters have said China can sacrifice overall economic progress to reinforce their internal hierarchy and advance relative national strength, the US is perfectly capable of doing the same and I would say have been instigating exactly such a strategy since the mid-2000's financial crisis.

Click to expand...

supercat said:

How is U.S. going to win a trade war against China? By increasing tariff to 25% on all Chinese imports? In any case, American importers pay the tariff, not Chinese exporters. So U.S. importers and consumers pay the tariff eventually. Only Trump and Navarro believe the U.S. can win a trade war by increasing tariff. What I really worry about, though, is that Chinese elites are actually in cahoots with American and global elites covertly, and they will make some secret deals that undermine China's interest, while allowing themselves making enormous fortunes on the American and Chinese markets.

Click to expand...

Josh Luo said:

My question is over whether more control or less control over the economy would allow the CCP to maintain its legitimacy and support.

Click to expand...

Therefore, would rolling back SOE subsidies, along with subsidies directed toward MIC 2025 programs, while giving the PRC's private sector (including allowing more millionaires and billionaires to move more of their assets abroad) more freedom seriously weaken the CCP's ability to mobilize support and resources, especially in times of crises?

Click to expand...

PanAsian said:

It is not a matter of whether Trump understands what he is doing, it is a matter of what his agenda really is. Not just Trump per se but the US powers-that-be are keen to maintain their domestic pecking order and grip on power which means both blaming others, preferably foreigners, for problems of their own making/handling as well as making life more difficult for the lower rungs of society so they can't afford to protest or rebel but fall in line instead. Trade war and even decoupling with China can serve both purposes. It is too soon to tell whether the US public and political system will be able to save themselves or whether they will completely succumb to this corruption, and how much of the cost the rest of the world will have to bear.

Click to expand...

localizer said:

I am 95% sure Trump is not behind these decisions right now. This is too well planned out for him. He hit the market when people are all buying into the market every time and got it right every time. I even suspect they're trying to buy out the Chinese market as well.

Click to expand...

Trump Advisers Accuse China of Reneging on Trade Commitments

President Trump is facing pressure to show that the pain of his trade war will be worth it for the companies, farmers and consumers caught in the middle.

By

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

• May 6, 2019
• WASHINGTON — President Trump’s top economic advisers on Monday accused China of reneging on previous commitments to resolve a monthslong trade war and said Mr. Trump was prepared to prolong the standoff to force more significant concessions from Beijing.

Mr. Trump, angry that China is retreating from its commitments just as the sides appeared to be nearing a deal and confident the American economy can handle a continuation of the trade war, will increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday morning, his top advisers said.

“We’re moving backwards instead of forwards, and in the president’s view that’s not acceptable,” his top trade adviser, Robert Lighthizer, told reporters on Monday. “Over the last week or so, we have seen an erosion in commitments by China.”

Mr. Trump’s last-minute escalation highlights his administration’s difficult political position as it tries to fend off criticism that he has not been sufficiently tough on China. The president is facing pressure to show that the pain of his trade war will be worth it for the companies, farmers and consumers caught in the middle. Mr. Trump’s decision to potentially upend an agreement that many expected to be finalized this week in Washington appears to be a political calculation that staying tough on China will be a better proposition in the 2020 campaign.

Fueling that decision is the president’s growing confidence that his trade policies are bolstering the American economy, without any downside. Mr. Trump and his advisers have seized on strong first-quarter economic growth as vindication that their tough approach to trade is accelerating the economy, and putting the United States in a stronger position than China to withstand any blowback from higher tariffs. Gross domestic product surged past forecasts in the first quarter, rising 3.2 percent on an annual basis in part because of a sharp slowdown in imports.

Click to expand...

The top US trade negotiator said Monday that the Trump administration will be moving forward on

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

threat to escalate tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods effective Friday.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said China reneged on previous agreements over the weekend, derailing months of progress toward a detailed trade agreement between the world's two largest economies.
As of Friday, penalties on $200 billion of Chinese goods will be lifted to 25% from 10%,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.
"We felt like we were on track to get somewhere," Lighthizer told reporters. "We tried to accommodate changes in the text, but these are substantial and substantive changes." He described the changes as "reneging on prior commitments."
The news comes ahead of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in Washington later this week.
The two men said the move to press ahead with tariffs is not a signal of a breakdown of talks. The Treasury secretary declined to speculate on whether the two countries would be able to close the gap before the end of the week.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will still be leading the delegation and arriving in Washington on Thursday, the US officials said.
"It did become particularly clear with some new information they were trying to go back on very clear language that had the potential to change the deal dramatically," said Mnuchin.
He added: "This is a big change in direction for the negotiation."
After repeatedly promising that the US-China talks were

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, Trump threw the negotiations into question over the weekend with a series of tweets threatening new tariffs.
US markets

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

after an initial slide in

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. Trump continued his warnings on Monday — two days before

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in Washington for what many believed would be the completion of a deal.
"The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars," Trump tweeted on Monday. "Sorry, we're not going to be doing that anymore!"
US officials said they were awaiting word from Beijing on the plans for the Chinese delegation that was supposed to arrive later this week.
Earlier Monday, a Chinese government spokesman said they were still planning to move forward with the talks, set to begin Wednesday, but a US official said it was still unclear whether it will be led by Liu He, the vice premier and chief trade negotiator, and whether this round of negotiations will be truncated after Trump's tweets threatening additional tariffs.
The Chinese delegation was set to include more than 100 people, one official said, and was viewed by many involved with the talks as a final step before a summit encounter between Trump and his Chinese counterpart.
Trump was trying to rattle China with the tweet, according to the official, who said the last round of talks ended with some uncertainty on how much China would be willing to change its economic practices as part of a deal.
"The President is, I think, issuing a warning here, that, you know, we bent over backwards earlier, we suspended the 25% tariff to 10 and then we've left it there. That may not be forever if the talks don't work out," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox News on Sunday.
While the Chinese have agreed to make some changes to their economic practices in principle, they have been reluctant to see them codified in writing as part of the trade agreement, the official said.
Trump received word on those developments during a briefing from his top trade negotiators last week, a US official said, describing the news as "disappointing."
Trump is being advised by some of his aides that accepting a deal without those changes included would appear weak and politically expedient. And he is growing inpatient with the back-and-forth talks

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

by months.
Trump has hoped to strike a deal that would boost markets and help along a strong US economy, believing his political prospects are closely tied to Wall Street and Americans' economic optimism.
Some inside his administration have feared that could result in a President overly thirsty for a deal, even one with unfavorable terms. Yet Trump has consistently said he will only sign an agreement if it is good for the United States and resolves long-standing trade disputes.
Such an agreement will only come after a direct meeting between Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Trump has said, leading to expectations of a summit meeting as early as this month, possibly at the White House.
Those plans, along with the larger trade talks, were in question on Monday, though Chinese officials worked to put forward an unbothered air.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in a regular press briefing on Monday that the US has threatened China with tariffs "numerous" times in the past, but that positive developments have been made in the ten rounds of trade talks between the two countries.
The US understands China's position "very clearly," Geng said.

Click to expand...

Josh Luo said:

We Win Trade War, The Communist State Falls Apart
... This will cause the political viability of trade with China to continue to decrease, and we’ll be staring at the same problem all over again.

Click to expand...

China's trade delegation is preparing to go to the United States for further consultations, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said Monday.

Geng made the remarks at a press briefing when answering relevant questions, adding that the past ten rounds of Sino-U.S. economic and trade consultations have recorded positive progress.

"What's most pressing at the moment is that, we hope, the U.S. side and the Chinese side will work together to meet each other half way and strive to reach a mutually beneficial and win-win agreement on the basis of mutual respect," he said.

"This not only serves the Chinese interests, but also the U.S. interests. It also meets the general expectation of the international community," Geng said.

Click to expand...

It often seems as though Donald Trump goes out of his way to openly defy conventional wisdom. He did just that when he recently took to social media to announce a new wave of expanded tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States. Although Trump leveling new import tariffs is something that the world has become accustomed to, the fact that he did so prior to what many felt would be a springtime end to his so-called trade war on China left many bemused.

To be certain, Trump's tariff increase on Chinese goods at this late stage in trade talks is a calculated provocation but it cannot have any long-term impact unless it elicits the overreaction that Trump is trying to provoke.

In many respects, an element of Trump's public persona is similar to the online phenomenon known as “trolling.” Many social media observers have defined trolling as an activity in which one intentionally posts something outrageous or absurd in order to provoke an overreaction from those mistaking the trolling for an honest expression.

Applying similar strategies to discourse regarding important relations with a foreign state is an unconventional strategy and one that carries with it a measure of risk. For those on the receiving end of Trump's unconventional provocations, the best strategy is to react in a proportional manner and most crucially in a way that does not upset the overall trajectory of bilateral relations.

For China-U.S. bilateral relations, ending Trump's trade war on a win-win basis remains a priority. In this sense, it is helpful to remember that even before Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, China was moving rapidly toward further reform and opening up in multiple important areas. In the drive to create a moderately prosperous society in all respects, China sought to increase imports by enacting policies friendly to ever freer trade with partners from around the world.

China also sought to attract ever more foreign direct investment by streamlining and modernizing old legislation. Finally, China sought to open up its financial markets to ever more global investment connectivity.

These goals which existed prior to the trade war are now matters of daily life for those trading with and doing business in China. To put it in a different way, China is doing of its own accord that which Trump and those of his political tradition claimed they had always wished China would do.

It is unhelpful when one changes the rules of a game in the middle of play. But by criticizing Chinese economic openness and transparency after years of proffering highly exaggerated slurs about how China's economy was allegedly closed, those of a nationalistic economic mentality in countries like the U.S. and elsewhere are revealing their own inconsistency.

The only way to counter inconsistency or strange “surprises” such as Trump's new tariffs is to remain consistent and focused sharply on one's initial goal. This is what China has done throughout the so-called trade war and this is not likely to stop just because of Trump's last minute tariff hikes.

China has every right to express its views about Trump's decision but Chinese officials will almost certainly make their views known first in private before releasing an update through official channels. China will also likely react in an appropriate fashion but if one is prone to believe that China will react by adopting a strategy as extreme as Trump's, such a person is clearly mistaken.

When viewed from the broadest perspective, China will continue to do what it was already doing. This includes pursuing ever more reform and opening up in terms of trade, financial services and foreign direct investment.

By trying to force a delay in the finalization of a trade agreement, Donald Trump is only hurting those in the U.S. who want to get more of their goods into China's vast market. The overall message is that China is ready to speak in a realistic manner just as soon as Trump and his colleagues are willing to do the same.

Click to expand...

Nutrient said:

In the short term, the American consumer will be destroyed by higher prices. Most Americans have less than $1000 in the bank.

Click to expand...