Donald Trump’s trade war is ‘holding gun to the head’ of US economy, US-China experts say
- Panel of US-China experts in Washington have said US President Donald Trump’s trade war has failed to fundamentally change China’s behaviour
- Melanie Hart, from the Centre for American Progress, said that Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule is contributing to China’s economic slowdown
US President Donald Trump’s trade policy towards China is “holding a gun to the head” of the American economy, according to a panel of experts in Washington.
Ely Ratner, who was deputy national security adviser to former vice-president Joe Biden, said this was “a paltry deal that achieves almost nothing”, and marked “the end of a stage of US economic policy that has basically failed and that needs to be transitioned away from”.
Melanie Hart, director of China Policy at the Centre for American Progress, said the deal was “just undoing the damage that has been done” by US tariffs on China and the subsequent retaliation from Beijing, which has hit the American agricultural economy.
“The stories that I’m hearing from family farms are absolutely atrocious and unacceptable. The costs are real and those costs have become unbearable. And to address that, I am quite sure that the Trump administration will get whatever it needs to do to get some kind of deal to say there’s a deal and to reduce some of the real costs that are being borne by American families,” Hart said.
