China should stand firm against President Trump’s fire and fury

By Wang Shanshan

U.S. President Donald Trump has been surrounded by fire and fury, willingly or otherwise, since taking office. He looks to be at war with the Cabinet, his White House advisers, and lawmakers. And when he's not busy fighting them, he's battling corporate America, the media, foreign countries, and international organizations.

But right now, he seems to have focused his attention on starting a trade war with China.

National flags of China and the U.S. [File photo: IC]

The first shots were fired in March when President Trump started the process of sharply raising tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and then granting most countries exceptions – but not China. This was followed by the release on Tuesday of a proposed list of products subject to additional tariffs of up to 25 percent, covering imports from China worth some 50 billion U.S. dollars.

Less than 11 hours later, China shot back, with its own list of 106 products imported from the United States worth 50 billion dollars that will be subject to an additional 25 percent tariff. On Thursday, the U.S. President announced that he had asked his trade representative to consider 100 billion U.S. dollars of additional tariffs on imports from China.

China's response to President Trump's latest move was to remind the United States that it was ready to fight "at any cost" and take "comprehensive countermeasures," in statements made by the Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

These actions have happened at a dizzying speed, which has surprised most observers.

What will China do in the face of someone as “deliberately provocative” as President Trump, someone “so willing to pick fights that stir his supporters, rile his opponents, and divert public attention”, as portrayed in TIME magazine?

China has made full preparations and will fight back if the US imposes 100 billion US dollars’ worth of additional tariffs on Chinese imports, said Gao Feng, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce at the press conference, April 6, 2018. [Photo: mofcom.gov.cn]

Throughout the escalation in tensions, China has been clear about what it intends to do. It will not sit quietly to "listen and observe", as some international observers seemed to assume it would. China has made it clear on many occasions that it doesn't want a trade war, but if it is forced to fight, it will fight to the end, as the old saying goes, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

Trade threats might be an effective weapon to wield against some countries, but they don't work when you're coming up against China, home to world's second largest economy. Trade relationships embody the complex interplay between economic resources, industry capabilities, trade policies, and legal frameworks and mechanisms, each of which has their own long history of development. Trade is not a game to be played the way you play poker.

President Trump says he won't back down until the gap between the value of U.S. imports and exports with China has dramatically narrowed. China won't back down if the United States continues to target it with unilateral trade sanctions in opposition to international trade rules and mechanisms.

China doesn't want to see jobs lost at home. Nor does it want to see the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who grow soybeans, raise pigs, and build cars and airplanes lose their jobs. And no one wants to see financial markets on either side of the Pacific plunged into instability.

It has been said that, in war, no plan extends with any certainty beyond the start of the battle. Trade wars are no different. The United States should use the 60-day window to pull back from the brink and find a way forward to work with China.  

(Wang Shanshan is a current affairs commentator at CRI and CGTN and former Washington bureau chief of CRI, with ten years of research on China-US relations. )