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A trade war of unprecedented scope and magnitude currently engulfs the world’s two largest economies – the US and China. As of mid-May 2019, the US had imposed import tariffs on roughly $250 billion of Chinese goods, China had met the US with retaliatory tariffs on $110 billion of US merchandise, and talks to resolve the conflict appear to have broken down. As the US-China conflict continues, American trade relations with the EU and Japan are strained. Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on autos and auto parts overshadows tri-party and bilateral discussions.
What happened to get us here? Over the last 20 years, trade globalisation has increased welfare in the US (Feenstra and Weinstein 2017) and improved productivity in China (Yu 2015). But while these gains have been substantial, the costs imposed on displaced US manufacturing workers have also been severe (Autor et al. 2013). A new eBook seeks to shed light on the origins of the Sino-American economic conflict, the current impacts of the conflict on economic activity around the world, and the likely consequences for the future of globalisation (Crowley 2019). It is a story in three acts, beginning with the accession of China to the WTO, tracing through the story of how China’s development and economic integration through global trade led to the world’s largest trade conflict in decades, and ending with questions about whether the rules-based multilateral trading system will survive and flourish or stagnate and fumble in an environment of uncertainty over future economic policy cooperation.
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