First published: Prospect, 14/11/2017
The US President went quiet on the subject during his recent Asia trip—but America’s trade deficit with China this year will be just shy of $370 billion. He’s not going to take that lying down
Donald Trump will be home in Washington this week after a long trip through Asia, the centrepiece of which was a visit to Beijing, where he was feted by President Xi Jinping. The latter offered his guest an unprecedented private dinner in the Forbidden City and a red carpet welcome in Tiananmen Square. If you were following these developments, you could be forgiven for thinking that Sino-US relations couldn’t be sweeter, but you’d be wrong. Now he’s home, there’s a high probability that Trump’s visceral opposition to China’s trade policies will propel initiatives already under way in Washington to get tougher with Beijing.
On the surface, it looks as though the trip to China went well. There were good photo moments and no awkward joint press conferences. In a volte-face from his rhetoric at home, Trump pleased his hosts by saying that he blamed his predecessors, not China, for the large US-China trade imbalance: the US’ trade deficit with China this year will be just shy of $370 billion. Trade deals worth $250 billion were proudly announced, ostensibly a big win for the US. Further, in an apparent move to open the finance sector up to US and other firms, China said that it had decided to lift the ceiling on the ownership by foreign financial firms of Chinese banks, asset management companies and insurance companies…..Read more:
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