To better understand the current trade rhetoric between the US and China, we spoke with Stephen Roach, Senior Lecturer at the Jackson Institute of the Yale School of Management.

STEPHEN ROACH, SENIOR LECTURER JACKSON INSTITUTE, YALE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT"Look, China is not about taking over the US. China's focused on innovation and technological change for its own purposes. And those are largely directed at making a critical transition from a history of importing foreign technology to developing its own homegrown or the technical word 'indigenous innovation' to stay the course of economic growth and development. China is at a level of per capita income, roughly about eighteen thousand dollars a year, this year according to the IMF and international dollars that usually proves challenging for most developing economies to move beyond. Most developing economies struggle at this level, and they fall back into what researchers called the middle-income trap, because they don't make the transition from imported to homegrown or indigenous innovation. So, China is pushing ahead in terms of technological advancement and innovation to get through this middle-income threshold. And they're doing it for their purposes, not to take over America."