You've got the wrong guy, Mr. Trump

World
Europe

Editor’s note: The author is a journalist for CGTN Opinion. Wang Yiwei, Jean Monnet Chair Professor and Director of Institute of International Affairs under Renmin University of China, was interviewed.

The White House unveiled on Friday its announcement on slapping a 25-percent tariff on 50 billion US dollars’ worth of Chinese imports. In this move bluntly targeting China’s Made in China 2025 plan, Donald Trump fulfilled his promise days ago to “upset” China about trade.

It eventually happened, even after three rounds of trade talks. China responded that it would take immediate countermeasures on US products with equal force and scale and withdraw all the consensuses reached over a bumpy ride.

The formal announcement of the US government, zeroing in on hi-tech products, comes not as a surprise given Trump’s erratic and selfish personality. What he cares about is the digit – a reduction in the trade deficit with China.

During his presidential campaign, he vowed to tackle what he considered “unfair” Chinese trade practices. "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country, and that's what they're doing," he said during a rally in May 2016. For the past two years, he never slackened to make his political promise come true.

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press in Washington, DC, before departing the White House for the G7 summit, June 8, 2018. /VCG Photo

As the mid-term elections are approaching, he’s been on edge about appealing to his voters by meeting each pledge he made to lower the odds of impeachment.

However, the fledgling president is not the most dangerous one when it comes to the trade provocations. A troika of trade hawks in his house – US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro and United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer – have long been outspoken critics of so-called “unfair” trade with China and other countries.

In 2016, Navarro, who caused a sensation with his publication “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action,” wrote in a Los Angeles Times article, “China has been waging an undeclared trade war on the US since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.”

Billionaire investor Ross, a confidant of Trump who tided him over several bankruptcies, shares the same view with Navarro on trade despite not being that anti-China. And Lighthizer is one of the protectionist brains behind the 1985 Plaza Accord that precipitated a lost decade for Japan.

Actually, Trump is in a White House swarming with the largest number of trade nationalists since the 1930s. Coupled with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, the president is surrounded by a house of pro-establishment hardliners whom he tapped personally. They are behind the scenes, sketching the political contour in fear of the rise of the Asian powerhouse.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (C) leaves a hotel ahead of trade talks with Chinese officials in Beijing, China, June 2, 2018. /VCG Photo

Nonetheless, will they spell victory for “fair” economic practices through a trade fight with China? Have they ever studied who “hurt the economic growth for the United States” as they've asserted in the statement?

Though neoliberalism originated in the early 20th century, the concept later caught on during the administrations of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s saw an increasing number of policies facilitating free market principles, such as promoting free trade and rolling back regulation on enterprises, international affairs scholar Wang Yiwei told CGTN.

“Financial deregulation and trade liberalization gradually led to industrial hollowing-out, especially in the manufacturing sector and other real economy areas,” said Wang, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University of China.

The US started transferring their manufacturing to emerging economies, notably China at the time. American business owners wanted cheaper labor and production costs, so they took their factories elsewhere, leaving blue-collared workers in the country to fend for themselves. The wealthy class became richer and the lower-middle class more impoverished.

An economic bubble formed as the affluent focused on developing a digital economy until the subprime mortgage crisis a dozen years later.

It’s fair to say that the high unemployment rate, especially in the Rust Belt, and slowing economic growth are created by the overdeveloped neoliberalism of the US.

A farmer loads soybeans from his grain bin onto a truck before taking them to a grain elevator in Dwight, Illinois, United States, June 13, 2018. /VCG Photo

It’s no longer their heyday when they monopolized the global discourse and economy. They should develop a correct perception that the world economic architecture has taken on a historic change with the rise of emerging countries like China and India. Look at G7 – the wealthiest countries now account for less than half of the global economic aggregate.

The Trump administration should feel satisfied: The latest statistics show that the US economy is ratcheting up so fast as to leave the rest of the world behind. Furthermore, Trump’s approval rating skyrocketed to 44 percent at the end of May, the highest in over a year.

By imposing the stiff tariffs on Chinese goods, the US is blaming the wrong person. Beijing is fully prepared for any trade war and unswerving in defending multilateralism. But can Washington still afford a bitter economic battle after splitting with its traditional allies and scheming to quit the North American Free Trade Agreement?

(Cover Photo: Chinese and American national flags fly next to each other outside an international hotel in Beijing, July 7, 2013. /VCG Photo)