Macroscope | US-China trade war may not be good for America, but it’s good for Trump
Nicholas Spiro says no matter how chaotic the White House policymaking process and how the US midterm elections pan out, as long as Trump retains the support of his base and US stocks stay buoyant, China should expect the US president to dig in his heels
Much of the recent commentary on US trade policy has focused on Trump’s notoriously erratic and impulsive behaviour, which has sparked further infighting inside the White House – much to the annoyance of China's trade negotiators – and revealed the extent to which Trump is his own chief adviser, personalising the policymaking process to an unprecedented degree.
This partly explains why Trump is doubling down. While the latest batch of opinion polls show that his approval ratings have fallen since the trade war escalated in the summer – he is now behind all of America’s elected presidents during the polling era at the same point in time in their respective presidencies, according to FiveThirtyEight, a data-driven website focused on opinion poll analysis – Trump and his supporters have always distrusted traditional polling.
What matters to the former real estate mogul is that 73 per cent of his Republican Party’s voters support his trade tariffs as much as they supported the sweeping tax cuts he introduced last year, according to a new survey published in The New York Times on Tuesday.
What is more, there is a sharp partisan divide in perceptions of America’s economy, with nearly two-thirds of Republican voters believing their personal finances have improved over the past year, compared with just 16 per cent of Democratic voters.