US sells China short: analysts
More measures ‘possible’ if US insists on trade war
The US has underestimated China’s determination to open up at its own pace, and China can adopt more retaliatory economic measures if the US insists on a trade war, experts said Wednesday.
The comments came after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Tuesday that China has underestimated US President Donald Trump’s resolve to launch more tariffs unless the country changes its “predatory” trade practices, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday.
“In fact, it is not that China has underestimated Trump’s resolve, but that Trump has underestimated China’s determination to defend its legal rights and interests and to seek growth based on its own pace,” Dong Yan, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics and Politics, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Trump has asked for too much in trade with China, harming the country’s core interests, Dong said, adding that even if China has made some adjustments during trade talks with the US in recent months, Trump never seems to be satisfied.
Trump on Monday threatened a 10-percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese products and an additional list worth $200 billion if China fights back.
“The fundamental reality is that talk is cheap,” Navarro was quoted as saying in the Reuters report.
“If they thought that they could buy us off cheap with a few extra products sold and allow them to continue to steal our intellectual property and crown jewels, that was a miscalculation.”
Liu Jianying, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said that China highly values intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and actively participates in IPR cooperation globally.
Liu told the Global Times on Wednesday that technology cooperation and transfer between companies are corporate matters and the government should not intervene.
“If the US insists on initiating a trade war, China can adopt retaliatory measures in sectors like investment and finance instead of merely a tariff list,” she said.
On Monday, The New York Times cited a source saying that Trump told Apple CEO Tim Cook that the US government would not impose tariffs on iPhones assembled in China.
The reported exemption for Apple’s iPhones shows that Trump’s trade policies toward China also go against the will of the US people because “a wrong trade war will impose an unbearable outcome on US industries such as technology,” Liu said.