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US-China trade war
This Week in AsiaEconomics

US and China set on ‘decoupling’ amid their clash of civilisations, Singapore Forbes forum told

  • Economists and business leaders warn that a ‘phase one deal’ on trade is only a short-term truce and masks a deeper transition for the world economy
  • The decoupling process has already taken place in technology and manufacturing, experts say, and leaves businesses with a difficult dilemma

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US President Donald Trump said Beijing and Washington had reached a ‘substantial phase one deal’ in two days of talks between his trade negotiators and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He (left). Photo: Bloomberg
Dewey Simin Beijing
The world’s two largest economies seem set on “decoupling”, panellists at a regional summit in Singapore said on Tuesday, as they painted a downbeat picture of the future amid high-level negotiations between the US and China to hammer out a deal on tariffs.

This process would not just stop at trade and investment, warned Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of hotel and resort operator Banyan Tree Holdings, but would extend to areas such as intellectual property.

“The Americans seem determined to decouple with China. China has seen it happening, and has realised that it can decouple because its economy is large enough,” Ho said during a panel discussion at the annual Forbes Global CEO Conference at the Shangri-La Hotel.

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On Friday, US President Donald Trump said Beijing and Washington had reached a “substantial phase one deal” in two days of talks in the US capital between Vice-Premier Liu He, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump said it would take a few weeks to put details of the deal on paper, but the US had agreed to suspend a 5 percentage point tariff increase on Chinese imports scheduled for Tuesday, and China would buy more US agricultural products.
Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of hotel and resort operator Banyan Tree Holdings, said US-China economic ‘decoupling’ would extend to areas such as intellectual property. Photo: SCMP
Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of hotel and resort operator Banyan Tree Holdings, said US-China economic ‘decoupling’ would extend to areas such as intellectual property. Photo: SCMP
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Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, chief economics commentator for Forbes Asia, felt this deal was a “truce” but “merely a short pause in this long and arduous process”.

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