Ng Han Guan/AP Photo
An American company promotes environmental sensors during the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, November 2019.
Trump keeps dangling, and then withdrawing, the promise of part one of a deal with China. Like so much else about Trump’s presidency, this is a sham and a scam.
Let’s recall what getting tough with China was about in the first place. China behaves as a mercantilist nation, subsidizes exports, steals intellectual property, and coerces U.S. companies that want to operate in China to sell only for re-export to the U.S. and not into China’s internal market. Not a normal capitalist nation by a long shot, but one that enjoys all the benefits of membership in the trading system.
So Trump, stealing some of the clothes of progressive Democratic critics, decided to get tough. That began a mutual tariff war, since China responded tit for tat.
Now, both Trump and Xi Jinping have decided to de-escalate, each for their own domestic political reasons. Trump needs some good election-year economic news and doesn’t want to spook an already fading recovery. Xi is a dictator, but is not all-powerful and has been criticized internally for mismanaging the U.S.-China relationship.
De-escalation means some phased-in, reciprocal cuts in the higher tariffs. When the dust settles, Trump will brag that he headed off a trade war (that he started), there will be some minor cosmetic commitments by Beijing, and nothing will have changed in the structural assaults on trading and the U.S. economy by the Chinese.
Score it: Xi, 1; Trump 0.
