Donald Trump’s ready to escalate US trade war if deal not agreed soon, says top White House adviser Michael Pillsbury

Tariffs on Chinese goods ‘could go to 50 per cent or 100 per cent’, Michael Pillsbury says

But the American leader is not pursuing ‘cold war 2.0’, and US-China decoupling would be a ‘consequence of no agreement’ by Beijing, he says

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Published: 11:00pm, 19 Sep 2019Updated: 1:09pm, 20 Sep 2019

The United States is set to ramp up the pressure on China if a trade deal is not agreed soon, a key White House adviser said, adding that Washington has so far imposed only “low level tariffs” on the Asian giant.

Described by US President Donald Trump as “the leading authority on China”, Michael Pillsbury said in an interview in Hong Kong on Thursday that Trump had been “remarkably restrained in the pressure he has brought to bear on China in the trade field”.

“Does the president have options to escalate the trade war? Yes, the tariffs can be raised higher. These are low level tariffs that could go to 50 per cent or 100 per cent,” he said, adding that Trump’s critics were wrong to assume the president was “just bluffing” when he threatened an all-out trade war.

“There are other options involving the financial markets, Wall Street, you know, the president has a whole range of options,” he said.

Pillsbury’s profile has risen during Trump’s presidency, with his book – The Hundred-Year Marathon, which advocates a harder line on China – becoming required reading among Washington politicos.

The book claims that Beijing has a century-long plan to usurp the US as the world’s dominant superpower through various tactics, including technology theft.

Pillsbury, the American director of the Centre on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, is known to speak to Trump regularly on China issues, but has said repeatedly that the president’s “most important adviser on China is himself”.