Tricks of the trade war
Don insists it’s bogus amid China revenge
Team Trump scrambled to downplay talk of a trade war with China on Wednesday after that nation, with the world’s secondlargest economy, quickly hit back against US plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods.
“You know, there are carrots and sticks in life, but [President Trump] is ultimately a freetrader,” said Lawrence Kudlow, who began his job this week as the president’s economic adviser.
“He’s said that to me, he’s said it publicly. So he wants to solve this with the least amount of pain.”
China retaliated Wednesday by announcing 25 percent tariffs on key American imports, including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals.
Beijing responded after Trump proposed 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial technology, transport and medical products.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also minimized China’s response as proportional to what the United States proposed.
“Even shooting wars end with negotiations,” he said on CNBC. “So it wouldn’t be surprising at all if the net outcome of all this is some sort of negotiation.”
Trump earlier took to Twitter to slam previous US officials and the Chinese, though he denied the US was in a trade war.
“We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with In- tellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!” he tweeted
Despite the administration’s reassurances, Chinese analysts warned that while the economic impact of the latest developments in the dispute could be moderate in the short term, concerns were growing about the long-term effects.
“A full-on trade war remains a risk for the global economy, as there is still room for miscalculation from either China or the US,” Chua Han Teng, head of Asian country risk and financial markets at BRI Research, told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, a number of farmstate GOP lawmakers and American business interests panned the president’s tariffs.
“It's not fair, and it doesn't make economic sense,” Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a statement.
“The administration knew that if it imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, China would retaliate against US agriculture. I warned President Trump as much in a White House meeting in February.”