The U.S.-China Cold War Is Heating Up

China’s mercantilist trade war against the US effectively started when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001. The US supported China’s admission to the WTO, expecting that China would abide by the organization’s rules, which mostly promoted free trade among its 144 member nations back then. (There are 164 members currently.) Instead, the Chinese abused their membership by pursuing mercantilist trade policies. They persistently and systematically violated the organization’s trade rules by using their WTO status to unfair advantage.

However, US officials didn’t publicly acknowledge that the US had been duped until Donald Trump became president. During the presidential election campaign, Trump often promised to take effective measures to correct America’s huge bilateral trade deficit with China. He called China one of the “greatest currency manipulators ever.” He declared that he would instruct the Treasury Department to so label China when he became president.

On April 13, 2018, the Treasury Department, in its biannual currency exchange report, scolded China for its lack of progress in reducing the trade deficit with the US but did not find that it was improperly devaluing its currency, the renminbi. Actually, it was the third time since Trump assumed the presidency that the Treasury Department opted not to accuse China of improper meddling. Instead, the administration opted for tariffs as an alternative means to pressure the Chinese to fix the trade problem.

By the way, previous administrations recognized the problem, but chose a less public and lower-key diplomatic approach to get China to change its ways. For example, to kick-start negotiations to resolve the problem, the Clinton administration slapped the “currency manipulator” label on China in 1994. That was well before China was admitted to the WTO.

In other words, the problem has been festering for a very long time indeed. The US merchandise trade deficit with China was $29.5 billion in 1994 (Death by China: Confronting the Dragon—A Global Call to Action . Here is an excerpt from the book’s Amazon description:

“The world’s most populous nation and soon-to-be largest economy is rapidly turning into the planet’s most efficient assassin. Unscrupulous Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding world markets with lethal products. China’s perverse form of capitalism combines illegal mercantilist and protectionist weapons to pick off American industries, job by job. China’s emboldened military is racing towards head-on confrontation with the U.S. Meanwhile, America’s executives, politicians, and even academics remain silent about the looming threat.”

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Most importantly, above and beyond China’s unfair trade practices, Navarro strongly suggested that China posed an existential threat to America’s national security.

(2) The President’s 2018 UN speech. In his September 25, 2018 speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said the following about China, focusing on trade:

“The United States lost over 3 million manufacturing jobs, nearly a quarter of all steel jobs, and 60,000 factories after China joined the WTO. And we have racked up $13 trillion in trade deficits over the last two decades. But those days are over. We will no longer tolerate such abuse. We will not allow our workers to be victimized, our companies to be cheated, and our wealth to be plundered and transferred. America will never apologize for protecting its citizens. … China’s market distortions and the way they deal cannot be tolerated.”

(3) The Vice President’s 2018 speech. In an October 4, 2018 Morning Briefing titled “Panic Attack #62,” we listed six reasons for the selloff. We included the Veep’s speech:

“Also setting the stage for last week’s selloff was a 10/4 speech by Vice President Mike Pence detailing the Trump administration’s long list of complaints against China. It wasn’t just about trade ... Pence’s speech made it clear that the problem is that China aspires to be a superpower at the expense of the US. While Trump seems to be winning his trade wars with most of America’s major trading partners, the conflict with China is likely to worsen because it isn’t just about trade. It is about national security.”

(4) The President’s 2019 UN speech. In a September 24, 2019 reported that the Japanese government will pay at least $536 million for companies to leave China:

“Japan’s government will start paying its companies to move factories out of China and back home or to Southeast Asia, part of a new program to secure supply chains and reduce dependence on manufacturing in China.”

(9) The Attorney General’s speech. On Thursday, July 16, Attorney General William Barr warned that the CCP has launched an “economic blitzkrieg” to topple the US from its perch as the world’s superpower, laying out the threat as the most important issue of this century and calling for the Free World to join together in a “whole of society approach” against it.

“How the United States responds to this challenge will have historic implications and will determine whether the United States and its liberal democratic allies will continue to shape their own destiny or whether the CCP and its autocratic tributaries will control the future,” Barr said during a July 17 speech titled “Communist China and the Free World’s Future.” Here, in his words, is the key theme of his speech:

“The truth is that our policies—and those of other free nations—resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it. ... Securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time, and America is perfectly positioned to lead it because our founding principles give us that opportunity.” His main conclusion was unambiguously hostile toward the Chinese government: “The free world must triumph over this new tyranny.”

On Friday, July 24, Beijing retaliated by ordering the closure of the American consulate in Chengdu. So far, the Chinese haven’t retaliated for the US moves to block Huawei from doing business around the world. What if the Chinese do so against Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), or other American companies?

Peter Navarro certainly has won the debate over China within the Trump administration, hands down.

Written By: Ed Yardeni