L*****d
发帖数: 5093 | 1 China can’t go toe to toe with the U.S. in a widening tariff war because it
simply doesn’t buy enough stuff from America. But the Chinese are not
defenseless.
President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to apply tariffs on $200 billion
in Chinese goods and follow up with sanctions on an additional $200 billion
if China doesn’t alter longstanding trade barriers that the U.S. says are
unfair. The White House has already announced pending tariffs on $50 billion
in Chinese goods.
The White House escalation took place after China responded to the original
announcement of $50 billion in tariffs with restrictions on a similar value
of U.S. goods.
“Rather than altering those practices, it is now threatening United States
companies, workers, and farmers who have done nothing wrong,” Trump said in
a statement Monday.
The Chinese have initially targeted U.S. goods produced in states that
played a key role in Trump’s upset victory in 2016. China is canceling
orders for soybeans from Iowa and other Midwestern farm states, for example,
in an effort to help ignite a domestic backlash against Trump’s strategy
and force him to back down.
The Chinese government has also been known to take official and unofficial
steps to encourage its citizens and businesses to boycott foreign goods when
trade disputes flare up.
“There are innumerable examples of how this tactic has been used to punish
Japanese and Korean companies in the past,” said Carl Weinburg, chief
international economist at High Frequency Economics.
Such tactics could put a hurt on large U.S. companies such as General Motors
GM, -3.85% , General Electric GE, -1.70% Starbucks SBUX, +0.36% Apple AAPL
, -1.67% and many others that do big business in China. U.S. companies
spend and invest tens of billions of dollars in China each year.
One weapon China may no longer be able to use effectively is currency
devaluation: Making the yuan cheaper.
China has used the tactic in the past, but its economy is much larger now.
Letting the value of the yuan CNYUSD, -0.7108% fall would undo concerted
government efforts to stabilize the currency, anger many other countries
aside from the U.S. and possibly even force China to buy more U.S. Treasurys
TMUBMUSD10Y, -1.13% . |
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