Yu, Xiang

Abstract: The Trump administration’ s hostile trade actions against China since the beginning of this year violate World Trade Organization rules. To protect the free trade world economic system, China has stood up to fight this trade bullying. When the US administration continued with harsher actions, the escalation in trade friction increased the potential harm for both countries. China has been very clear that Trump’ s trade tariffs cannot improve the bilateral trade imbalance.Tit-for-tat ought to be a last resort but China is open to talking. Now the ball is in Trump’ s court. As two big, influential economies, China and the US should calm down and go back to negotiating table to avoid a trade war trap. Bullying is only one approach President Trump can choose, but arbitrary threats are no solution. Full text available here.