On China-US trade, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said on Thursday that human rights are one of the centerpieces of the Biden administration’s trade policy, and “forced labor” functions as a “very crude subsidy” that gives China an unfair trade advantage. She claimed the US could use trade tools such as tariffs and a “forced labor” import ban against China. US officials stated on multiple occasions that Washington will not easily abandon the tariffs imposed on Chinese products during the Trump years. They have regarded those tariffs as a tool to pressure China and a bargaining chip for new negotiations. China-US trade is facing a conflicting situation. On one hand, the Biden administration that has inherited the Trump administration’s thinking of politicizing trade issues and suppressing China through trade has continuously set up obstacles. On the other, the two countries’ demand for each other’s market is very strong. Since the second half of last year, trade between them has continued to grow, with the figures in a single quarter or month even surpassing those before the trade war. Next, the geopolitical line dominated by the American political elites will continue to battle with the trade law between the two economies. Washington launched a ferocious offensive against China’s trade out of the following calculations. First, the Trump administration hoped to pressure China to make concessions by using high tariffs. They thought they could squeeze China in areas such as intellectual property rights, investment rules, and industrial policies to make US benefit. Second, they wanted to use high tariffs to force the manufacturing invested by American companies to return to the US. Third, as long as it can harm China, it doesn’t matter whether it’s beneficial to the US or not. However, China has been trying its best to conduct reforms based on its own political and economic systems and national conditions. It’s impossible for Beijing to concede sovereignty and let Washington decide its methods and pace. Therefore, US pressure is doomed to only have a limited effect. There is no way that it could issue orders to China. Some manufacturing in recent years is indeed leaving China. But the reasons are complicated, most of which are irrelevant to the trade war. Moreover, the speed of foreign investments flowing into China has outpaced that of foreign capital flowing out. China has become the world’s largest foreign direct investment recipient in 2020. More importantly, based on information released by the US, the American investments that left China because of factors such as increased labor costs didn’t return to the US, but went to Southeast Asia and South Asia. Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council, recently told US media that if the goal of the tariffs imposed on Chinese products “was to increase manufacturing employment in the US, I don’t see any evidence that that’s happened.”
–The Daily Mail-Global Times News Exchange Item
