Donald Trump promised a tough China trade policy, but few think it has worked
- Trump famously tweeted that ‘trade wars are good and easy to win’, but after four years it is hard to say his China policies have worked
- Allowing for the pandemic, many economists claim Trump’s trade stance has hurt the US economy as much as it has China’s
As voters in the United States prepare for the presidential election in November, the South China Morning Post is exploring the potential ramifications for China. The latest part of the US election series looks at the impact of US President Donald Trump’s trade policies on China.
When the US-China trade war kicked off in 2018, Xu Yanlin, a senior sales manager for a Guangzhou company selling clothes and household items on Amazon, worried that her US market would collapse.
“The tariffs were absorbed by American consumers themselves. We have generally increased the unit price this year. For example, a design for which we charged US$16 before [the trade war] is now priced at about US$19.99,” said Xu, who added the pandemic provided another unlikely windfall.
“We feel that now even low-end consumers are not very sensitive to the price increase caused by tariffs. It might be due to government cash subsidies following the Covid-19 outbreak.”
Trump’s China trade policy is a failure of epic proportions
Some 11,200km (6,959 miles) away in Phoenix, Arizona, Barry Vogel, CEO of industry group Audio & Loudspeaker Technologies International, said the tariffs were a “double whammy” for US speaker manufacturers.
