Scott Kennedy is a senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He has visited China on numerous occasions over the past 37 years and written extensively on the country, particularly regarding its economic policy and relations with the United States.
The Trump administration has offered a variety of explanations for their approach to international trade and management of the global economy. The one that seems most persuasive to me is their view that the international trading system has been deeply unfair to the US for a long time. The US has maintained lower tariff and non-tariff barriers than those from other countries, whether allies or not.
As a result of viewing the system as unfair, they believed that they could not use the World Trade Organization and other traditional means to get a better outcome. So instead, they decided to use the leverage of denying access to the American market to force through change.
We saw the dramatic results unfold on April 2 and in the days afterward, in their effort to switch from a multilateral system of common tariffs based on most favoured nation status and national treatment to one based on reciprocal tariffs negotiated line by line, country by country.
This is not necessarily where they want things to end. Rather, they want to start negotiations that could result in tariffs potentially coming down if possible.
