In the US-China Trade War, a Cease-fire Ends Nothing
Long-term economic competition is at the mercy of even longer-term geopolitical competition.
By Phillip Orchard
Last Saturday in Buenos Aires, over grilled steak and Malbec one assumes were produced domestically, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached something of cease-fire in the trade war. Four days later, it’s unclear whether they agree on what they agreed to. The official statements they’ve issued subsequently clashed in scope, tone and substance. Not that the finer points will make much of a difference for the next few years. The U.S. and China are just beginning what will surely be a long, ugly process of economic disintegration that will disrupt both countries and, given their economic influence, alter the structure of the global economy.
But when the dust settles, each will still have ample interest in doing business with the other, making a narrower yet mutually beneficial long-term arrangement possible in the future. The only way that changes is if the broader strategic competition with China dramatically intensifies, in which case the U.S. will have every reason to weaponize trade.
The White House’s version of events is as follows: China pledged to buy a “very substantial” amount of U.S. agricultural, energy and industrial goods, with purchases of farm products beginning immediately. Beijing also agreed to negotiate immediately on Chinese practices such as forced technology transfers, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers and cyber theft. In exchange, the U.S. promised to delay until March a planned 15 percent jump in the September round of 10 percent tariffs targeting some $200 billion in Chinese exports. (It wasn’t until Monday that Trump said China, home to the world’s largest auto market, would remove tariffs on U.S. auto exports, which increased to 40 percent in July.)
But Beijing has said nothing about the 90 day extension, nor about which goods it’s planning to buy, nor how it will buy them. (It has yet to confirm Trump’s announcement about auto exports; neither have Trump’s trade advisors, for that matter.) At no point did China even exhibit a willingness to talk about the trade practices that helped spark the trade war in the first place, at least not publicly. According to Beijing, the upcoming talks will focus on scrapping all tariffs imposed by both countries and on reaching a consensus on trade.
To be clear, the differences in the statements reflect the necessity of political salesmanship. But they also attest to the difficulties that confound a more permanent agreement: China can’t concede on the biggest issues at stake, and the U.S. isn’t under enough immediate economic or political pressure to back down. So regardless of what’s up for discussion, extending talks by a few months is won’t make these challenges any less difficult.
Why the U.S. Won’t Back Down
The difficulties lie not in the arithmetic of tariffs and trade but in the nature of the trade relationship itself. China’s trade surplus ($375 billion in goods) is certainly an issue – bringing it down was a centerpiece of Trump’s presidential campaign – but it isn’t the main issue. In many ways, it testifies to the power of U.S. consumers and the sophistication of the U.S. economy, and fixating on reducing the headline figure won’t bring back labor-intensive jobs lost to China. The U.S and China could have a mutually beneficial trade relationship and still run a hefty trade imbalance — so long as the U.S is able to compete with China on a level playing field. Currently, it’s not. What the U.S. needs is the ability to sell what the U.S. specializes in (high-end goods and services) in China’s rapidly growing market without facing informal tariffs or fearing, for example, loss of sensitive intellectual property to emerging Chinese competitors that have unlimited access to state lending. It means playing by the common set of rules China agreed to when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and abiding by WTO rulings to resolve complaints, just as the U.S. and its other trading partners do when disputes inevitably arise. Ad hoc, state-directed purchases of U.S. goods by China to dent the deficit won’t address these underlying structural issues.
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