What are the trade cards Donald Trump could play against China?
Chinese telecoms and semiconductor manufacturers could face billions of dollars in US sanctions, trade specialist warns
When US President Donald Trump slapped “safeguard” tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines on Monday, to China’s “strong dissatisfaction”, was he firing the first shots in a bigger trade war?
University of Maryland business professor Gary Cohen warned in an opinion article for The Hill that Trump could “open the flood gates to counterproductive trade battles”.
But Dan Ikenson, a director for trade policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, said on Twitter that Trump’s two predecessors had also imposed discretionary safeguard duties.
However, unlike Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who had more favourable attitudes towards the multilateral trading system and its rules, Ikenson said Trump had been “more assertive” in invoking seldom-used unilateral trade weapons, such as a “Section 301” investigation into alleged Chinese theft of intellectual property, a “Section 232” national security probe on steel and aluminium imports, and a government-initiated anti-dumping and anti-subsidy case targeting Chinese aluminium alloy sheets.
Of those three Trump cards, action under Section 301 of the US Trade Act looms as the biggest potential game-changer.
