{"id":16580,"date":"2018-04-12T15:02:46","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T10:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/jwt2015\/?p=16580"},"modified":"2018-04-12T15:02:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T10:02:46","slug":"why-trumps-latest-steps-heighten-risk-of-a-global-trade-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/studykit\/currentaffairs\/daily-articles\/why-trumps-latest-steps-heighten-risk-of-a-global-trade-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump\u2019s latest steps heighten risk of a global trade conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Why<\/a><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON: President Rona\u00ad\u00adld Reagan once likened trade wars to the pie fights in old Hollywood comedies. One pie in the face leads to another. And then another.<\/p>\n

Pretty soon, Reagan said in a 1986 radio address, \u201ceverything and everybody just gets messier and messier. The difference here is that it\u2019s not funny. It\u2019s tragic. Protectionism becomes destructionism. It costs jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the world\u2019s financial markets are gripped by fear that an escalating trade rift between the United States and China the two mightiest economies could smear the world with a lot of splattered cream and broken crust. If it doesn\u2019t prove tragic, as Reagan warned, it may still inflict far-reaching pain.<\/p>\n

The Dow Jones industrial average lost a combined nearly 1,150 points Thursday and Friday after President Donald Trump set his administration on a path to restrict Chinese investment in the United States and impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese products.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be very worried,\u201d said Bryan Riley, director of the conservative National Taxpayer Union\u2019s Free Trade Initiative. \u201cIt\u2019s very possible this could escalate into something that neither country intends.\u201d The trade sanctions that Trump unveiled Thursday are meant to punish Beijing for pilfering technology from American companies or for forcing them to hand over technology in exchange for access to China\u2019s market. The announcement followed a seven-month investigation by the Office of the US Trade Representative into the tactics China has deployed to try to overtake American technological supremacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina has not been playing by the rules,\u201d said Stephen Ezell, director of global innovation policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation think tank.<\/p>\n

Unbowed, China immediately threatened to retaliate if the United States followed through on its actions.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Beijing unveiled a broad list of US products from apples and wine to pork to steel pipe that could face retaliatory Chinese tariffs in a separate trade spat with Washington. That dispute is over taxes that Trump imposed this month on imported steel and aluminum.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want a trade war, but we are not afraid of it,\u201d said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China\u2019s Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n

The stakes are even higher in the standoff over Beijing\u2019s technology policies than in the old-school dispute over metals. An industrial nation\u2019s ability to harness technology is increasingly vital to healthy economic expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf China dominates the industries of the future, it will be very difficult for the United States to have an economic future,\u201d Peter Navarro, a key White House trade adviser, told reporters.<\/p>\n

Trade tensions are rising at a delicate time. The world economy has finally emerged from the shadow of the Great Recession. Major regions are growing in tandem for the first time in a decade. International economic growth is expected to reach a seven-year high of 3.9 per cent this year. Last year, global trade expanded 4.2pc, the most since 2011.<\/p>\n

Some trade experts fear that a conflict over technology will erupt into an escalating war of sanctions between the world\u2019s two biggest economies Reagan\u2019s destructive pie fight.<\/p>\n

The US-China tensions remind economists and trade analysts of the Reagan-era skirmishes between the United States and Japan, which at the time appeared to pose a grave threat to US economic dominance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is \u2018Back to the Future\u2019 that old \u201880s film,\u201d said Rod Hunter, a former White House trade adviser. Indeed, Trump\u2019s top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, is a veteran of the trade battles with Tokyo, having served in the Reagan administration.<\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.dawn.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON: President Rona\u00ad\u00adld Reagan once likened trade wars to the pie fights in old Hollywood comedies. One pie in the face leads to another. And then another. Pretty soon, Reagan said in a 1986 radio address, \u201ceverything and everybody just gets messier and messier. The difference here is that it\u2019s not funny. It\u2019s tragic. Protectionism …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5285],"tags":[257,9668,1226,5997,610],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}