‘Painful’ enforcement ahead for China if trade war deal is reached with US insisting on unilateral terms
- China is said to favour a traditional trade arbitration system, in the style of those used at the World Trade Organisation
- The US reportedly wants a unilateral snapback system, which would allow it to periodically review whether China is upholding its side of any deal
US President Donald Trump has delayed the application of additional tariffs on Chinese imports, citing “substantial progress” in addressing the US demands for structural reform in the Chinese economy. This fifth and final article in a series on those demands looks at possible solutions to the trade war.
As the United States and China try to hammer out a deal that would end the trade war, there are serious concerns among US officials and business about how any agreement would be enforced.
The US is demanding that China make structural changes to its economy in the areas of forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cyber theft, services and agriculture.
US President Donald Trump also demanded that China “purchase a not yet agreed upon, but very substantial, amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other product from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries”.
If a deal is to be reached, its enforcement is likely to be “painful”, experts said, given the lack of transparency of the Chinese economy, and Beijing’s history of not following through on previous pledges.
“In a lot of the areas, enforcement is going to be extremely difficult – if not impossible,” said Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the Hinrich Foundation, a pro-trade group.