Trade frictions are nothing new to the U.S.-China relationship. Over the years they’ve ebbed and flowed, but were managed with enough deft to avoid major meltdowns. That seems likely to change under President Donald Trump, an economic nationalist who sees trade as a zero-sum game and the United States emerging “the winner” of a trade war with China.
Since China runs a large bilateral trade surplus with the United States, Trump believes the United States has enormous leverage to compel changes in China’s behavior by threatening and imposing trade restrictions. Trump has support for this provocative tack — a “mandate to blow things up,” as it’s been described — but it would constitute a major departure from over 80 years of U.S. trade policy orthodoxy. It could also devastate the global economy.