Trump’s administration at least woke us up to the reality that the Chinese government gives up nothing without a fight. After more than a century of foreign encroachment and bad faith dealings by the Western powers, no one should begrudge Beijing’s instinct to drive a hard bargain. But the bargain was too far in China’s favour for too long.
China has always said it is not seeking to overthrow the global order. We should listen. Why would China go to the trouble of capsizing the global order when it can simply take it over, whole and intact? … Far from opening up a new battleground, China’s plan is to fight on familiar territory. Its message to the world is simple: China is ready to pick up the slack, as the United States retreats from its global responsibilities. For a world exhausted and impoverished by the pandemic, it’s a seductive proposition.
So, the sooner the advanced Western economies that laid the original rules for the WTO get off their pompous high horses, the better. The sooner they recognise that China’s practices do not constitute a unique and existential challenge, but rather raise important 21st-century questions about how original trade rules need to be updated, the better.
In November 1999, the United States and China signed a trade pact that paved the way to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. To secure U.S. support for its WTO accession, China agreed to open its markets and cut tariffs an average of 23 percent. Some twenty years later today, the United States and China are engaged in a raging trade war.
Because the World Trade Organization tends to operate beneath the surface of the global rules-based trading system, it is easy for people to forget the indispensable role that it plays. But now that the Trump administration is waging a quiet war on the institution, the international community must stop taking it for granted.
Over the past five decades or so, Asia’s economies have relied largely on an export-oriented development model to support rapid economic transformation and growth. But with US President Donald Trump fulfilling his promise to adopt a more protectionist approach to trade — an effort that could spur retaliatory measures by other countries — that model is coming under increasing strain.
Last week, President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would be slapping steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminium set off fears of a global trade war. But in reality, the international trading system has been unraveling for some time. After taking a quick glance at the World Trade Organization today, one might be excused for believing that it is a dead man walking.
China exports more to the US than the US exports to China, and that makes Donald Trump furious. But with the Communist Party’s 19th Congress set to take place in Beijing this year, Chinese leaders are unlikely to yield to US pressure.
