THE up-and-down roller-coaster trade war between the United States (US) and China has continued with no end in sight.
It all began when the US, after President Trump’s election in 2016, imposed tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods, blaming the US trade deficit with China on the latter’s trading policies. Talks were held and hopes were high that agreement would be reached in negotiations between officials of the two countries. A meeting was set between American and Chinese officials in Washington, DC, last May 9, but then President Trump claimed the Chinese were backpedalling on agreements reached by lower officials.
The US has imposed tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports, and China has responded in kind. It has imposed its own tariffs on US goods, while threatening to stop its exports of “rare earth” metals, 90 percent of which China controls, which are said to be indispensable to America’s high-tech production.
At the center of the US-China trade warfare is the US action against China’s technological flagship company Huawei, whose chief finance officer Madame Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada for extradition to the US on charges of potential violation of US sanctions against Iran. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said he is fighting the cases in US courts. He declined to retaliate against US tech giant Apple, which he referred to as his “teacher.” Meanwhile, Huawei is reported moving ahead in its operations in Britain, in Malaysia, in the European Union, and in the African Union.
Last May 13, US President Trump said he would meet China President Xi Jinping in the G20 June meet, raising hopes for an end to the trade war, but on May 27, Trump said the US was “not ready” for a deal with China. On May 30, other US officials expressed hope for the meeting with President Xi, but the next day, a former chairman of the Bank of China said a breakthrough was “unlikely.”
Amid this standoff, the world continues to hope that the differences between the two nations, which are today’s biggest economies in the world, will be settled, that the acrimonious exchange of punitive actions will end, and that they, along with the rest of the world, will return to normal trade relations – not trade war – with one another.
