US-China Issues - Trade +++

The relationship between the two great nations, the U.S. and China, took an almost about-face turn in recent years from 'engaging China into the world' to 'targeting China as an enemy'. The Trump Administration with his handpicked team of staff has made the U.S. China Policy even more uncertain than the Obama Administration. This is partly due to the new style of Presidency Mr. Donald Trump has brought to the White House and partly due to the rapid rise in economic power China has exhibited with her net buying power reaching the number one position in the world. China maintains a trade surplus with nearly all her trading partners in the world except a handful of countries. The U.S. has a trade deficit in goods with China over $300 Billion annually since 2012. The US-China relation was somewhat warm in 2017 with a Trump-Xi summit at Mar-a-Lago, Florida in March and Trump's State visit to China in November plus China's agreeing to buy more US goods. But in 2018, the Trump Administration initiated a tariff war starting with a 'global safeguard tariff' in February, placing 30% tariff on solar panels and 20% on washing machines, then 25% tariff on all steel imports and 10% on all aluminum imports in March. From then on to 2019, China reciprocated and the U.S. escalated threatening to apply tariffs to thousands of items up to US$200 Billion in value, making trade negotiations lingering on. The US-China conflict is not limited in trade as evidenced by other events such as U.S. applying sanctions to Chinese technology corporations, examples like Huawei and ZTE, and accusing China unfairly acquiring technologies to upgrade her manufacturing capability which China touted as "China Manufacturer 2025". The author has been studying the US-China relations from a historical perspective and closely monitoring current events concerning the two countries through the mainstream media as well as the organic views expressed in Internet blogs and news circulations. This book is his fifth publications in the book series of Mainstream and Organic Views focusing on US-China issues from trade to other conflicts.