Is there hope for an end to the US-China trade tension?

World
Europe

01:30

By CGTN's World Insight

US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 10 percent tariff on 200 billion US dollars worth of Chinese goods, worsening a tit-for-tat trade spat with China.

The Chinese side has urged the Trump administration to stop the damaging words and actions, criticizing recent tariffs as a "flip-flop" over signed trade deals. Besides China, the US drew flak from its northern and southern neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and its trans-Atlantic allies, in a tiff over aluminum and steel tariffs earlier this month.

Is there a way to pull back from the brink of a possible all-out trade war? Joined in CGTN World Insight, Carlo Dade, the director of the Center on Trade and Investment Policy at the Canada West Foundation shared his views.

"We need a way out of this escalating tit-for-tat, the way out we may see in history," said Dade, adding, "In 2002, President George Bush imposed tariffs on the imports of steel to the US. He did it right before the US mid-term elections at the time. The tariffs were supposed to last for 3-5 years, but the Americans cut the tariffs in 18 months."

According to Dade, the reason not only lies in the WTO ruling against the US, but also the tariff itself which was an economic and political disaster in the US. "Congress was prepared to take over, but the administration itself choose to resent the tariffs because the damage was so great."

In 2002, those tariffs were not applied to Canadian and Mexican steel, which were the two biggest suppliers for the US. Now they are. "So the one hope we have is that the economic blowback we saw in 2002 in returns, and forces the administration to change the course or the Congress take back the trade authority."

World Insight with Tian Wei is a 45-minute global affairs and debate show on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 10:15 p.m. BJT (1415GMT), with rebroadcasts at 4:15 a.m. BJT (2015GMT).