Tag: China

Waning of American Power? Trump Struggles With an Asia in Crisis

New York Times logoThe Trump administration has taken a hands-off approach to conflicts — from Kashmir to Hong Kong to the rivalry between Japan and South Korea — as Asian officials escalate the battles.

WASHINGTON — For two and a half years, President Trump has said he is finally doing in Asia what he asserts his predecessor, Barack Obama, failed to achieve with a strategic pivot: strengthen American influence and rally partners to push back against China.

But as violence escalates and old animosities are rekindled across Asia, Washington has chosen inaction, and governments are ignoring the Trump administration’s mild admonitions and calls for calm. Whether it is the internal battles in India and Hong Kong or the rivalry between two American allies, Japan and South Korea, Mr. Trump and his advisers are staying on the sidelines.

The inability or unwillingness of Washington to help defuse the flash points is one of the clearest signs yet of the erosion of American power and global influence under Mr. Trump, who has stuck to his “America First” idea of disengagement, analysts say.

View the complete August 13 article by Edward Wong on The New York Times website here.

Trump finally acknowledges his tariffs could hit consumers

Washington Post logo‘We are doing this for the Christmas season,’ Trump said as he announced a delay on his latest import taxes

President Trump has repeated the same mantra for months: The Chinese are paying the full price of his tariffs. It’s a line that the overwhelming majority of economists and business owners say is false, but Trump kept saying it — until Aug. 13.

The White House announced Tuesday that the president’s latest tariffs on China would be delayed on many popular items like cellphones, laptops and strollers. The 10 percent tax would not go into effect until Dec. 15, effectively ensuring retailers can import goods for the holidays before the tariffs take effect.

Trump himself told reporters the delay is to ensure consumers don’t face higher costs this Christmas. Here are his full remarks:

View the complete August 13 article by Heather Long on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s old disturbing comments about protests in China are haunting as the regime clashes with Hong Kong

AlterNet logoTensions continue to rise in Hong Kong as massive groups of pro-democracy protesters shut down an airport on Tuesday. The protesters have clashed with police while demonstrating against the Chinese government’s attempt to exert greater control over the quasi-independent region through an extradition law. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is saber-rattling over the protests and gathering military forces nearby in an apparent threat to extend greater authoritarian force.

It’s a fraught, complex and volatile situation demanding the world’s attention and, one might hope, the deft and strategic moral leadership of the United States government. Instead, of course, we have President Donald Trump.

Asked a few weeks ago if he supported the rights of protesters in Hong Kong, he gave a vague an unimpressive answer: “Well they are [protesting]. I don’t think China’s stopped them. China could stop them if they wanted. I’m not involved in it very much. I think President Xi of China has acted responsibly, very responsibly. They’ve been out there protesting for a long time. I’ve never seen protests like it where you have that many people, it looks like 2 million people. Those are big protests. But I hope that President Xi will do the right thing, but it has been going on for a long time there’s no question.”

View the complete August 13 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

News Analysis: In ramping up trade war with China, Trump could be playing with fire

WASHINGTON — Shortly before igniting a new round in his trade war with China, President Trump last week accused Beijing of trying to stall talks until after the 2020 election in hopes of negotiating a better deal with a Democrat in the White House.

But Trump has strong incentives to drag out the fight: Behind a relatively strong U.S. economy and at least the chance of more credit stimulus from the Federal Reserve, he may benefit politically from continuing the confrontation with Beijing because it’s red meat for his political base.

The potential loser in this international game of chicken is the U.S. economy. Both long term and short term, the White House is playing with fire — and it could end up burning Trump’s reelection bid.

View the complete August 6 article by Don Lee on The Los Angeles Times website here.

Donald Trump’s Trade War with China is Spiraling Out of Control

History tells us that big movements in financial markets are difficult to predict, but when they come they happen very quickly. That is what we have seen over the past several days, as investors around the world have responded to a sudden escalation in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, and the growing realization that at least one of these economies is being led by someone who doesn’t appear to understand the risks he is taking.

After posting their biggest decline of the year on Monday—a slide of three per cent—U.S. stocks rebounded somewhat on Tuesday morning. The modest rebound came after the the Chinese central bank signalled that, for now at least, it wouldn’t allow another decline in the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan. Monday’s big fall on Wall Street came after the yuan fell almost two per cent on that day, and Chinese officials suggested that the decline was a response to President Trump’s decision, last week, to broaden tariffs on Chinese goods. In a further escalation, the Trump Administration announced, on Monday evening, that it was designating China as a currency manipulator, a move that Trump signalled on Twitter by accusing the Chinese government of “trying to steal our businesses and factories.” (A lower value of the yuan makes Chinese exports more competitive.) Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Trade War with China is Spiraling Out of Control”

Treasury Dept. designates China a ‘currency manipulator,’ a major escalation of the trade war

Washington Post logoThe United States and China traded blows in an unrestrained economic conflict Monday that sent stock markets plunging and threatened to inflict significant damage on a weakening global economy.

Late in the day, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin formally labeled China a “currency manipulator,” a largely symbolic slap at Beijing that is likely to deepen the growing animosity between the two trading partners.

The move, which President Trump had promised to take on his first day in office, requires Treasury only to initiate consultations with China. Beijing has long denied U.S. accusations that it keeps its currency undervalued to make its products more competitive on world markets.

View the complete August 5 article by David J. Lynch, Gerry Shih, Jeff Stein and Damian Paletta on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Resisted Mnuchin’s Proposal to Warn China of New Tariffs

•  ‘We’ll be taxing them,’ Trump says of 10% levy on China goods

•  Trump sent tariffs tweet moments after Oval Office meeting

President Donald Trump resisted giving Beijing advance notice of his intent to slap a new 10% tariff on $300 billion in Chinese goods in an Oval Office meeting before he announced the duties, according to several people familiar with the discussion.

During the meeting, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer briefed Trump on their talks in Shanghai this week with their Chinese counterparts. While the White House called the talks “constructive” in a statement issued Wednesday, Trump concluded that the two U.S. officials actually came away with nothing, the people said.

“When my people came home, they said ‘we’re talking, we have another meeting in early September,”’ Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Thursday for a campaign rally. “I said ‘that’s fine, but in the meantime, until such time as there’s a deal, we’ll be taxing them.’”

View the complete August 1 article by Jennifer Jacobs, Jenny Leonard, Shawn Donnan and Saleha Mohsin on the Bloomberg website here.

How Trump’s latest China tariffs could squeeze US consumers

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest tariffs President Donald Trump plans to impose on Chinese goods would cost U.S. households an average of $200 a year, some economists estimate, and would start to bite consumers and retailers just as the holiday shopping season begins.

That cost would come on top of the roughly $830 cost imposed per household from Trump’s existing tariffs, according to a New York Federal Reserve analysis.

Trump plans to tax $300 billion of Chinese imports at 10% starting in September with the goal of accelerating trade talks with Beijing to favor the United States. The new tariffs would be in addition to 25% tariffs Trump has imposed on $250 billion in Chinese products. Those are mostly industrial goods. By contrast, the new tariffs would target products used by American consumers, like shoes, clothing and cellphones.

By Friday, Trump’s new planned tariffs had triggered worries, especially among retailers, about the consequences. Retail stores, many of which have been struggling, would have to make the painful choice of either absorbing the higher costs from the new tariffs or imposing them on price-conscious customers.

View the complete August 2 article by Josh Boak, Anne D’Innocenzio and Joe McDonald on the Associated Press website here.

China Reacts to Trade Tariffs and Hong Kong Protests by Blaming U.S.

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — President Trump, frustrated by increasingly fruitless negotiations with China, said Thursday that the United States would impose a 10 percent tariff on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese imports next month, a significant escalation in a trade war that has dragged on for more than a year.

The new tariff would come on top of the 25 percent levy that Mr. Trump has already imposed on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, resulting in the United States taxing nearly everything China sends to the United States, from iPhones to New Balance sneakers to children’s books.

Mr. Trump had agreed in June not to impose more tariffs after meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and agreeing to restart trade talks. But Mr. Trump said he was moving ahead with the levies as of Sept. 1 as punishment for China’s failure to live up to its commitments, including buying more American agricultural products and stemming the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

View the complete August 1 article by Alan Rappeport on The New York Times website here.

Trump backpedals on China threats as trade deal shows signs of slipping away

Washington Post logoPresident Trump said Tuesday that a new trade deal with China might not come until after the 2020 elections, a significant departure from more than a year of trying to exert pressure on the world’s second-largest economy.

His comments were the latest in rapidly evolving and sometimes contradictory strategic shifts. Less than two months ago, he announced that a huge crackdown against China was imminent. On Tuesday, he suggested that further action could be more than a year away, and everything could change based on whether he is reelected.

In several Twitter posts, Trump accused China of delaying negotiations, which began in earnest last December. Even as Trump’s chief trade advisers resumed talks in Shanghai, the president’s tweets suggested a deal may be further away than it had seemed in recent months.

View the complete July 30 article by Taylor Telford, Damian Paletta and David J. Lynch on The Washington Post website here.