Are products Made in China a worldwide threat? Judging by the tenant of the Oval Office “flood the markets” for their insatiable status of great planetary factory and “deteriorate the national industries, security and economies.” The tone of his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is, instead, more conciliatory. Speak in multilateral terms and defends, at least officially, the guidelines that still govern the global order. As much as Donald Trump is conspired with the financial and business elite or breaks the deck of traditional allies and distributes other diplomatic cards to govern the world in his own way, under his unilateralist baton.
Something of snake charming (now that the lunar year of this reptile of his zodiac begins) must possess XI when his two conversations with Trump since he won the elections -the first, a few days after his triumph at the polls and the Second, last Tuesday- a reduction of tariff climbing to China has emerged from 60% to 10%. It is also true that the last telephone thread served the Republican president to corroborate that he would not receive the Indult of Canada or Mexico. But the replica of the Chinese leader was equally blunt. Beijing will leave friendly rhetoric and accept the trigger for hostilities.
It doesn’t seem like a toast to the sun. He Asian giant has perfected its protection shield against the commercial affronts of the Trumpism. In fact, you can boast of having a part of meritorious war. Because despite what the universal collective subconscious can believe, Beijing has not only damping the direct damage of the 2018 tariff spiral, during Trump’s first mandate, but has left the export prohibitions, technological vetoes and embargoes of chips or the rebounds tariffs to electric vehicles Made in China -Sus batteries and components- that Joe Biden’s government imposed. Throughout this journey, it has maintained a comfortable commercial surplus with the US.
This time, China is a better willingness to face Donald Trump’s commercial policy. Or, at least, better prepared than six years ago. The second global economy was already forging a coat of protection against the expected onslaught of its geostrategic rival. There are several sample buttons: the establishment of ferrous export controls on most of their critical raw materials -essentially, rare earth and metal minerals, essential in the competitive race by the world technological scepter -, as well as the application of a Specific tax at Chinese agricultural products highly demanded by the US market or the activation of measures against American multinationals with notable consumption fees in the Asian giant.
Beijing directs its sights to American multinationals
Apple is one of them. But also Tesla, PVH Group, which has brands such as Tommy Hilfiger or Calvin Klein, or Illuminina, a biotechnology company specialized in genomic sequencing that has just been associated with Nvidia to develop artificial intelligence (AI) linked to the health sector. The apple company, for example, has seen its investment confidence diminish by revealing satisfactory income and benefits in the fourth quarter of 2024 (and in the set of exercise), but with a sales decrease of 11% of its iPhones in China , fact that generated stock market uncertainty in Wall Street. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s flagship gives positions in the Chinese market, which has already passed several times to the capitalization of its car brand in recent years.
The tense and uncertain commercial battle between the two superpowers has overshadowed the American stock market atmosphere, enervated from the black Monday of January 20 with the DEPEEEK exhibition – the high -end Chinese chatpt – that put in check the technological values to the point to leave Silicon Valley with hardly any capitalist pulse. Somehow, it is still in shock. McKinsey’s partners, perhaps the most powerful of global consultants, discuss their presence in China after Trump tension with the imposition of 10% of tariffs on goods Made in China. Without apparent negotiating concessions, as in the cases of its USMCA partners – the former gasoline, that the American president himself was responsible for lapidating in his first mandate – Mexico and Canada.
Bloomberg It informs that an intense debate has been opened in its executive dome about whether the services provision – and lobby – should continue to be universal or, on the other hand, to leave a market, the Chinese, loaded with risks by the “volatile” relationship with relationship with USA. The defenders of their departure argue that their business is lucrative enough in their nation of origin to stop advising Chinese companies. Although your international boss, Bob Sternfels, considers that “being global is not an option, but an choice.”
McKinsey has offices in 130 cities from 65 countries and weighs China’s abandonment – anonymous sources consulted by the news agency that gave Trump’s victory.
In parallel, Beijing seems to have found the key that his juncture needed to hear to spur its dynamism. After a 2024 with massive flights of capital, the ghost of the deflation campaigning to its wide and a real estate sector that did not finish carbure and continued shooting the debts of municipalities and banks. Although their financial entities, with dominant state capital, continue to remove excessive toxic assets exposed to housing business from their accounting books. Among other reasons, to dispose of fiscal resources of up to 800,000 million dollars for this year and collateral monetary stimuli to address the tariff increase of 10% of Washington.
The ‘Asian giant’ does not seem to have mud feet
“China is too big and important to think that you can dismant His inability to “reverse”, as the republican leader in 2016 said during the electoral campaign against Hillary Clinton, the deficit of his bilateral trade.
Since then, the balance of the balance between the two countries has widen up to 287,000 million dollars in the 11 months of last year, last data accounted for. Although, in 2019, American firms began to import from Taiwan or Vietnam, the gap has not dropped from the 254,000 million registered 2016 -Avisa Lovely- and that Beijing has applied retaliation tariffs on US goods during administration Biden worth about 110,000 million, which reduced the entry of goods and services Made in us.
In this second assault, China “has swelled its arsenal of defensive commercial weapons,” he says. They are no longer saved from warning. XI maintains the open dialogue with Trump before a possible, but unlikely agreement, at least in the short term, while immediately imposed special encumbrances on coal and liquefied natural gas, up to 15%, and 10% on the oil without refine , agricultural equipment, large displacement vehicles or the US commercial vans. In addition to intensifying the safeguards, for the sake of national security, as does not tire of invoking Trump – and, to a lesser extent, driving – about Chinese exports of critical minerals (Tungsten, Telurio, Ruthenium, Molybdenum or Ruthenium) and of fattening the blacklist of non -reliable companies; that is, exposed to restrictions and sanctions.
At this point it is in which the economic team of XI, which Capitanea Lan Fo’an -su Minister of Finance-, admitted the opening of an antitrust investigation on Google, an initiative to which the undertaken against Nvidia joins in December, already with the proclamation of Trump’s triumph and as soon as another new Washington twist against Chinese high -tech products and services occurs. As if that were not enough, Financial Times Advanza that Lan Sopesa also open investigations against Intel, the other great American integrated circuit manufacturer, and that has China as its main foreign market.
Much of the Google services, such as their search engine or email, are vetoed by the Beijing regime, but Alphabet’s emblem still obtains benefits thanks to Chinese companies that are announced abroad and their mobile manufacturers that use Your Android operating system.
External Front and Disasion Power
XI, in addition, does not leave the multilateral front when denouncing US tariff rises before the WTO for “unilateral imposition” and for damaging “the spirit of free trade” and trusts in deterring your counterpart under the argument that they will be the tariffs themselves of the White House that will end up inflicting inflationist pain – in the dialectical weapon he used in campaign against the management of Biden – to US consumers.
In line with the thesis of Warwick McKibbin and Marcus Noland, of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, they estimate that 10% taxes would cost the US economy more than 100,000 million dollars between 2025 and 2040; even without Chinese reprisals. Although in collision with a certain consensus of the market that considers that the vision of the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besent, that the rates are counterproductive and Trump’s iron hand to win in his bilateral negotiations will be able to win in his bilateral negotiations.
In the eyes of the Neoliberal Doctrine Club, the Republican leader has only fired a air save to hint a devastating commercial war. Although other studies such as Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) affirm that the probabilities of bilateral negotiation are low, although they will exist, because their predecessor, the pact known as phase one, signed at the beginning of the biden mandate to restore the flows of goods , “It was badly executed” and only “another collapse of value chains could induce a white smoking” between Washington and Beijing.
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