China’s WTO win over US offers no concrete reward but Beijing gets moral high ground, experts say
- Chinese officials ‘certainly happy’ with World Trade Organisation ruling that some of Donald Trump’s trade war tariffs are illegal
- However, a frosty political climate and dysfunction at the Geneva body suggest the spoils of victory will be moral rather than concrete
The Chinese government may feel vindicated by a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling that some of US President Donald Trump’s trade war tariffs flouted international rules, but in reality gains little from the verdict other than the moral high ground, according to pundits in China.
A panel of three trade experts made the ruling after Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs on more than US$350 billion worth of Chinese imports – a move he said was in response to Beijing’s unfair trade practices. This marks the first ruling from a number of dispute cases filed by China at the Geneva body in response to US trade war tariffs, which were first launched in July 2018.
Beijing is expected to use the dispute-settlement body’s ruling – that US tariffs on US$234 billion of Chinese goods were illegal – for propaganda purposes at home, while trying not to kick the hornets’ nest abroad, with Trump already lambasting the WTO’s findings.
“China feels vindicated, but it will get very little from this. The tariffs won’t go away or be reduced as a result of this, so the impact is very limited,” said John Gong, a professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing. “For the US, the outcome would have been anticipated, so this result will not have any effect on the US’ future actions.”