Political Reasons For The Us-china Trade War

To understand the underlying political reasons and motives behind the US-China trade war, it is noteworthy to understand the alteration in terms of political standings in the U.S. from 2016 and onwards.

“Make America Great Again”. Unless you have been oblivious or ignorant to what happens in the outside world, you will recognize this campaign slogan. The slogan was popularized by Donald Trump (Trump) in his 2016 presidential campaign (Duncan et al., 2018). In fact, 2016 should turn out be a pleasant year for Trump. Aforementioned, American voters elected Trump to become the 45th President of the U.S. (Kivisto, 2017).

Trump’s counterpart for the 2016 presidential election was Hilary Clinton (Clinton). Despite winning the popular vote by over 2.8 million votes, Clinton faced an overall defeat in Electoral College delegates to Trump. The Electoral College is a process established by the U.S. Constitution. The Americans vote indirectly and by the state, with votes converted into Electoral College delegates. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors with 100 senators, 435 representatives and three delegates from the District of Columbia. Thus, it requires 270 electoral votes to win an election. The amount of representatives each state positioned in the House of Representatives would be in direct share to its percentage of the total population.

In the Senate, each state would be equivalently denoted by two senators. In short, this gives an overrepresentation to the small states, since each state has two senators and one representative. For this reason, geographical sovereignty prevails over popular sovereignty (Duncan et al., 2018). The U.S. is known for its First-Past-The-Post or Winner-Take-All System. In other words, the candidate with the most votes wins, i.e. also known as plurality voting. Hence, Electoral College favors the major parties over minor parties, which has resulted in a two-party system, namely, the Democrats and the Republicans (Daily Dot Video, 2016).

A brief description of Trump will now be unfolded followed by what Trump promised the American people in his presidential campaign. So, who is Trump really?

Trump was born on the 14th of June, 1946, one of five children to Frederick Christ Trump (Fred), a real estate developer, and Mary Anne MacLeod. Trump’s paternal grandfather, Frederick Trump (Frederick) was a German immigrant. Over the course of the next years, his business was subject to success and, as a result, Frederick was compensated a lot of money. Frederick’s profitable business ventures stakes his son Fred, who in turn granted between $40 million and $200 million to Trump.

However, despite the successful business ventures, Trump was not well known to the publicity, until his pronouncement to run for the Presidency on June 16, 2015. Generally speaking, the media did not take his candidacy seriously and perceived his entry as entertainment value (Kivisto, 2017). However, Trump won the presidency and has been the president up to this very day: Two and a half year after his triumph.

Before running for president, Trump was - and still is - active on social media, in particular twitter (Trump Twitter Archive, 2011-2019). In a tweet from 2011, Trump disapproved China’s trade methods, claiming that China want to beat and own the U.S.

During Trump’s presidential campaign in May 2016, Trump tweeted: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country” (Koty & Wong, 2019). In fact, China originally preferred Trump to Clinton and downplayed the signals from the presidential campaign. However, these tweets was a premonitory of Trump’s opinion towards China and globalization (Brødsgaard, 2019).

So, what did Trump promise to the American people?

First of all, Trump is known for being a so-called populist. Populism is a variety of political approaches that intentionally appeal to “the people”, often comparing this group against a so-called “elite”. Trump believed – and still does – that globalization had been taken too far. The U.S. was challenged on its economic situation and with the rapid amelioration of China in terms of globalization, Trump decided to take a stand against the villain: China. Trump wanted to “Make America Great Again” (Duncan et al., 2018). Since the 1930s, a liberal American-based free trade was the hallmark of the U.S. trade policy. However, a turning point erupted when Trump was elected president on a protectionist platform, eventually, reversing 80 years of movement toward free trade (Noland, 2017).

Protectionism is the practice of protecting a country’s domestic industries from foreign competition by taxing imports. It is, therefore, government policies that restrain international trade in order to protect local businesses and jobs from foreign competition.On the contrary, free trade is a policy that allow countries to trade, unhindered by tariffs or quotas on goods and services. Thus, it is entirely opposite to that of protectionism.

Trump has been depicted as a protectionist, since he advocates “America First” positions which are usually interpreted as protectionist. Hence, Trump had to do something to the increasing globalization.

In a cruel twist of fate, the so-called Middle Americans were the ones suffering from the globalization. The Middle Americans are the middle class, middle-aged; not rich and not poor. Moreover, this group of people are the ones who reflect on how white male became an allegation rather than a description. Once Trump rose to the surface in American politics, they were able to relate to Trump’s anti-globalization approach, when he offered them an unconventional type of governance in the U.S.. Thus, they wanted their country, that had been taken away from them, back. The increasing globalization had left the middle class susceptible to the influence of outsourcing and, simultaneously, in risk of losing their jobs.

The Middle Americans feared the Democrats wanted to take from them and reallocate to Americans, who are newer, poorer, and in their opinion less worthy. Trump had also been addressing the “undeserving winners”. This group of people virtually got paid the same as the Middle Americans for doing less. (David Frum, The Great Republican Revolt). Additionally, the Middle Americans who joined forces with Trump held hostile views of e.g. immigrants and feminist women while also being displeased about free trade agreements.

Furthermore, this was played out in an exit poll from the Presidential Preference in 2016. Here, 53% of all men voted for Trump, whereas 41% voted for Clinton. On the contrary, 42% of all women voted for Trump, while 54% voted for Clinton. In addition, 58% of the white people voted for Trump and 37% voted for Clinton. It was a moderately different picture for the black people, with only 8% voting for Trump and 88% for Clinton. As many as 83% of all people believed that Trump could bring the needed change, while only 14% had faith in Clinton. (Contemporary United States, Duncan, chapter 4, p. 120). Above all, Trump had success with appealing to his supporters. His intentions to limit immigration, higher spending on security issues, high-end tax cuts and, most importantly, more protectionism and plans of imposing trade tariffs on goods from China, appealed to his voters. Thus, Trump was appealing to a common enemy in China.

In a speech from June 2016, Trump put forward a number of controversial trade protectionism plans to uphold the U.S. supremacy in the world. Not only did Trump address the trade dispute with China, he also considered the free trade with China as the main reason of job losses in the U.S., predominantly in manufacturing sector. Many domestic manufacturing firms imported materials from China, which might had led to job losses.

The Middle Americans has become known as the so-called blue collar workers. They are to be found in the manufacturing industry. It requires skills and some trade school, however, not a formal education commonly needed of white-collar workers. The white collar workers are, therefore, working in the service industry and mainly votes for the Democrats.

Trump wanted to protect those blue-collar workers from globalization by imposing tariffs on goods from China and this protection was one of the reasons for the intensification of the trade war. In 2017 and 2018, Trump attempted through protectionism to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from the likes of e.g. China and India. For instance, Trump put tariffs on steel in 2018 hoping that U.S. companies would buy local steel instead and lift the profit for domestic steel makers.

In other words, Trump’s protectionist trade policy with tariffs and quotas was an attempt to not only defend the supremacy of the U.S. in terms of the economic situation but also to ensure his political power before his voters and their national postulation. The aim was to find allegedly increasing “unfair trade practices” by nations such as China that can be perceived as a threat or even put an end to the “well-paid American jobs”. Job opportunities for those constituents was, therefore, the reason for Trump strengthening the issue of trade and industries to the policy debate, with his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” slogans.

One can argue that a new paradigm shift has taken place in the U.S.. A paradigm shift is a concept developed by Thomas Kuhn. In fact, it was initially intended for scientific purpose, however, it can also be put into operation to the U.S. in a political way. This is when a theory no longer can solve anomalies and, hence, has met sufficient resistance. Moreover, this will lead to a revolutionary alteration and the old paradigm will be replaced by a newer paradigm.

This was the case with the collapse of Keynesianism in the 1980s, which eventually led to the inauguration of neoliberalism. One can argue that neoliberalism unambiguously has paved the way for a simpler globalisation with limitless information and technological innovation. Thus, neoliberalism and globalization include austerity, free trade as well as outsourcing production to low-cost locations.

However, yet another paradigm shift has erupted with the election of Trump as president. Trump’s protectionism with putting tariffs on goods from China is a major component of mercantilism. Mercantilism was an economic system used from the 16th century to the 18th century. Moreover, a key factor was the attempt to limit imports via tariffs. Although, mercantilism was practiced centuries ago, Trump is performing some form of modern mercantilism by implementing a protectionist trade policy toward China. In short, a new paradigm shift has taken place from neoliberalism to neomercantilism, with the trade restrictions as means of protecting the American people and, therefore also, his voters from globalization.

Aforementioned, on November 9, 2016, Trump won the 2016 election ahead of Clinton. The presidency of Trump began on January 20, 2017. Thus, Trump has been president for more than two years. Yet he works toward being president for four more years. Trump’s reelection campaign is an ongoing campaign, in which Trump focuses on the many legislative accomplishment and tax cut. Obviously, Trump fancies to win the election to score political gain and maintain the country’s trade policy. As already mentioned in the economy part, Trump’s foreign policy is a success story to sell American voters in the upcoming presidential election in 2020.