Experts: Miscalculations May Extend US-China Trade War
Think tank and academic experts say that China and the U.S. are misinterpreting both sides' actions and the other country's vulnerability to the trade war, and that may extend the battles.
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Dennis Wilder, senior fellow for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, said on a think tank podcast Oct. 23: "I see this as an extended boxing match between two heavyweights. Both think they've got an edge in this boxing match, and indeed, both of them can land heavy blows on the other in the trade sector, but there's no knock-out blow...."
He said China's leadership thinks Donald Trump is just a wheeler-dealer. He said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is wrong to say China's economy is on the edge.
Still, Wilder said he doesn't expect Trump to add another 100 percentage points to tariffs on Chinese goods already on average in the mid-50s.
Philip Luck, director of the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the host of the program, agreed that it's hard to see how the trade war subsides.
"The set of issues is proliferating, not getting smaller," he said.
One of those new issues, Trump said himself this week, is talking about China's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Wildman said, "Let's be honest, without the Chinese support over the last three years, Putin could not be sustaining this war." Wildman said not only does China buy a lot of Russian oil, it also supplies machine tools Russian manufacturers need to build weapons and make repair parts with, and it supplies chips used in drones and other weaponry.
"What is striking about Trump is that he's ignored this for a while," Wildman added. "China takes just as much of the oil as India does. He has not wanted [this issue] to complicate the U.S. -China trade negotiations."
Wildman said Trump now seems to really want to force Putin to talk about settling the war.
"The Chinese may be caught a little off-guard by a sudden move in this direction," he said.
He said he doesn't think the Chinese are going to move much due to American pressure, but, given internal debate about the wisdom of being wholeheartedly on Russia's side, they could adjust.
Luck, elaborating on how the field of negotiations keeps getting larger, pointed to the Bureau of Industry and Security's 50% rule and the rare earths export licensing regime on the Chinese side. "We just keep escalating. It's escalation, and it's miscommunication about actions, or misinterpretation about behavior," he said.