US-China trade war reaches second anniversary, with superpower relations at ‘alarming’ lowest ebb
- Two years after the US imposed the first trade war tariffs, its trade deficit with China has narrowed, but wider relationship are being held together by the sticking plaster of a phase one deal
- China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi says ties are ‘facing the most serious challenges since the establishment of diplomatic relations’ in 1979
On the second anniversary of Washington unleashing its first trade war tariffs on Beijing, tensions continue to flare over issues ranging from Hong Kong to technology, with observers in both countries agreed that the superpower relationship between China and the United States is at its lowest ebb in decades.
“I don't know that we would have thought we would have fallen this far,” said Clark Jennings, former White House trade adviser to former US president Barack Obama.
“I don't think I will be considered blasphemous for saying as an Obama appointee that the Obama administration could be criticised for maybe not going far enough at certain points in the US-China relationship,” continued Jennings, now managing director at policy advisory firm C&M International.
“But if there were any gains [from the Trump administration’s strategy], at what cost? Not only to the US domestic economy, but at what cost to our relationships around the world and our standing on the global stage?”
Rather than be cowed, however, China has grown more belligerent on the international stage since the first 25 per cent tariff was placed on US$34 billion of goods on July 6, 2018, engaging in trade and geopolitical disputes with nations including India, Canada and Australia, while drawing widespread condemnation from a series of Western governments for rolling out a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, seen by many as an erosion of the city’s autonomy.