"China Is Winning Trump’s Trade War" - by CWP alum Zoe Zongyuan Liu
Since the Sino-American trade conflict began in 2018, China has developed a playbook with defensive and offensive strategies. The Chinese government has maintained an edge during US President Donald Trump’s second administration by doubling down on these strategies and rallying the public against perceived foreign humiliation.
SHENZHEN – The most recent trade talks between the United States and China in Geneva and London provided little more than temporary relief in the conflict between the world’s two largest economies. Despite US President Donald Trump’s efforts to tout the stopgap measures as a “deal” that benefits America, China reads the scoreboard differently – and believes it is winning. From its vantage point, it has weathered the storm and emerged more confident, more self-reliant, and more convinced that its long game is paying off.
Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu’s regional expertise is in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East, specifically Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press).
Photo Credit: By Matti Blume - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72339251
