A possible return of Trump to the White House raises fears that he will further harden this trade war with the Asian giant, a conflict in which Europe would also lose. The Republican candidate promised during the campaign that he would impose 60% tariffs on all products from the Asian giant and that tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles would increase from 100% to 200%, he said. declared in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in the It is a “entry of China into Taiwan”, he declared. Likewise, he also talked about a universal tariff of 10% for any country.
The argument put forward by the Republican is that these measures will open “a new era” for American industry since they would boost the national manufacturing industry and make it more competitive compared to products made in China.
For its part, China plans to adopt a fiscal stimulus package of 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) in additional loans over the next few years to support its economy and address the enormous risk of hidden debt facing it faces, as do local governments. » reported Reuters citing anonymous sources. Likewise, this stimulus could be greater if Donald Trump returns to reside at the White House next week, as the trade war between the two powers is expected to intensify.
Experts are closely monitoring events unfolding in American politics as they believe that a re-election of Donald Trump could cause even more geopolitical tensionswhich will push the world even further away from the long-awaited exit from the economic cycle.
Bloomberg editors assured in a commentary that a second Trump term would “promise more of the same, only worse” regarding the trade war with China.
Researchers at the Royal Elcano Institute, Judith Arnal and Federico Steinberg, assure that the Biden administration has maintained Trump’s approach with China, with tariffs, controls on exports and investments, at the same time that “it did not allow the renewal of the appeal body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and not to reach a new bilateral trade agreement in the traditional sense of the term.
For her part, Harris will not be less protectionist than her predecessors if she is elected. The vice president and Democratic candidate is clear that she will continue on the same path as Joe Biden when it comes to Chinese tariffs. It is true that Harris is more diplomatic regarding relations with Beijing and proposes specific tariffs on Chinese products that compete with American industry. We are talking in particular about 100% customs duties on electric cars, an additional 50% on solar panels manufactured by the Asian giant and a 25% tax on imports of aluminum and steel.
The average tariff the United States now imposes on foreign products is 3.4%, according to World Trade Organization (WTO) data, although there are disparities depending on country of origin and products. which create more competition.
Regardless, “both candidates insist on the importance of decoupling their economy from that of the Asian giant in areas related to technology and security,” say Arnal and Steinberg. And this argument results from a trade deficit with China.
“For decades, the U.S. trade balance was in balance, but toward the end of the last century, deficits began to widen, reaching a record level of $945 billion in 2022which decreased significantly to 784 billion in 2023,” they reported.
By country, the largest trade deficit is that with China, “hence the rhetoric that has emerged on the American side,” they explain. Concretely, in 2022, the United States trade deficit with China represented more than 367 billion dollars, before rising to 287 billion dollars last year.
But this gap with China was accompanied by an increase in trade with Mexico (a record trade deficit of $152 billion in 2023), “which shows that the American nerashoring strategy is working”, reiterate Arnal and Steinberg in their report.
Most favorable for Beijing
Independent Chinese political commentator and former professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Wu Qiang, assures that China could prefer Trump to Harris since “it would be a great advantage” for the Asian giant. The expert believes that if Donald Trump returned to Washington, “there would be deeper divisions in American democracy.” “Amid the withdrawal of Europe and its global allies, the United States will return to a new form of isolationism, which was already evident during Trump’s previous term,” he asserts.
But the key to all of this is that Trump’s tariff measures against China would have a cost to the pockets of Americans. The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan research group, estimates that if Republicans took the tariff war to the highest level, it would cost each American household an average of $2,600 a year. With Harris, it would be three-quarters of the same, despite his laxity.
