Macroscope | The trade war is here to stay: both China and the US are gearing up for a long, hard fight
Neal Kimberley says not only is the gulf of disagreement too wide to bridge, but neither side is focused on finding a fix: US attention is trained on the larger picture of China’s rise, while Beijing is working to reflate its economy to offset the impact of the trade war
President Donald Trump asserts strongly that his interest is in securing “fair” trade deals, but his words seem to indicate that he is a mercantilist who believes that running trade deficits, by definition, weakens the US.
“We are fixing one-sided trade deals that have stolen American jobs and drained American wealth, just taken away our wealth. It’s like candy from a baby, they took our money, they took our jobs. They took everything. They took our dignity,” Trump said on Friday at a rally in Missouri.
More specifically, “China last year took US$500 billion from our country – 500 billion, not million, 500 billion.” He added: “We have rebuilt China. We have given them such wealth.”