It's an epic battle that has the world transfixed. Protectionism has bubbled away in the world economy, producing lots of bluster and certain subtle policy shifts. The subtleties ended with the Trump Administration, with overt tariffs used to ignite North American trade talks. Those measures pale in comparison with the trade battle between the U.S. and China, where tariffs have been levied and threatened on a broad swath of bilateral trade. The stakes are high, elevating this to one of the top Canadian – and global – international trade concerns. No one knows this better than both the U.S. and China. So, will it end well?

America’s frustration with China’s trade practices is nothing new. Hints of the current U.S. Administration’s position go back as far as 2011, when then citizen Donald Trump, himself a business beneficiary of low-cost Chinese inputs, tweeted that ‘China is neither an ally or a friend – they want to beat U.S and own our country’. Statements like this sold well to the U.S public during the runup to the presidential election, and tweets became even more incendiary. They might have initially been greeted as the desperate rants of a wannabe, but on election night, they took on a whole new meaning...

This was excerpted from a 7 March 2019 commentary by Peter Hall of EDC.