Barack Obama: ‘I could not have a trade war’ with China due to global financial crisis
- Former US president Barack Obama explains that he was ‘hamstrung’ on dealing with China’s trade policies by global economic meltdown
- Obama says he ‘had to make sure we did not start a trade war that tipped the world into a depression’, on the back of the global financial crisis of 2008-09
Former US president Barack Obama has said he would have pushed China “much harder” on trade issues if it was not for the global financial crisis of 2008-09.
China’s role in the global economic recovery from the crisis, caused in large part by defaults on subprime mortgages in the United States, “hamstrung” his ability to tackle China’s “mercantilist policies that violated international trade rules”, Obama said in remarks made to the The Atlantic, which expanded on similar themes in his new book, A Promised Land.
I could not have a trade war in 2009 or 2010. At that point I needed the cooperation of China as well as Europe as well as every other potential [growth] engine
In his new book, Obama expanded on the role China’s record-setting economic stimulus plan played in supporting the global economy in the early days of his presidency, which ran from 2009-17.
He wrote that this restricted him from holding Beijing to account for “evading, bending, or breaking just about every agreed-about rule of international commerce”.
The Chinese government pledged to work with Western economies in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the biggest jolt to the global economy since the Great Depression in 1929.