Experts claim that US President Donald Trump’s administration “does not quite know how to deal with China.” The two countries have tense relations once more.
The most recent raging occurred when Beijing increased its restraining order for rare-earth metal exports on October 9 and the list’s components.
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Rare-earth metals are used in a variety of daily and crucial industries, including electric vehicles, smartphones, laptops, and defense equipment, in China with the largest reserves and the majority of the country’s processing facilities.
In a first, it also mandated that nations possess a permit to export rare-earth magnets and some semiconductor materials that have even trace amounts of minerals from China or products based on Chinese technology.
China’s actions on rare earths came after the US expanded its Entity List, a list of foreigners who can only be identified by specific foreigners, organizations, or governments, further limiting China’s ability to obtain the most advanced semiconductor chips, and enacted levies on Chinese-linked ships to both strengthen the US shipbuilding sector and lessen China’s influence on the world shipping trade. China retaliated by charging US-owned, US-operated, US-built, or flagged vessels against its own wishes.
According to Vina Nadjibulla, vice president for research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, “for the US, its actions on chip exports and shipping industry fees were not related to the trade agreement with China.”
According to Nadjibulla, the two nations have since engaged in an “information war,” in which they have each blamed the other for holding the world hostage due to their respective policies.
Beyond the rhetoric, China is actually stepping up its game.
With its increased export restrictions on rare earths, China is for the first time carrying out this extraterrestrial action, which also applies to other nations. They are prepared to respond to every US escalation and bring the US down, according to Nadjibulla. This trade war is “a whole lot different from what we were going through three months ago.”
According to Dexter Tiff Roberts, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global China Hub, China “has decided that the leverage is on their side,” in the lead-up to a planned meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month, the meeting is now resumed.
Roberts remarked, “They are all over the place right now, if you look at the Trump administration’s approach.”
Roberts made reference to the numerous tariff threats the US has made to China and to specific industries, as well as the soon-to-be-announced carve-outs that were made, as well as to the statements made at the Trump-Xi meeting, where Trump claimed it was going to stop and then reverse that two days later.
Roberts remarked that the Trump administration is unsure of how to handle China. They are unsure of China’s willingness to accept a lot of pain and are reluctant to accept US threats.
Beijing, on the other hand, has realized that Trump wants his state visit to seal that, perhaps because “he feels that is important to his credentials as a big deal maker,” but that he can’t get there without offering more to China.
China realized that it could work more closely in the meeting’s pre-conference.
Wei Liang, a professor with a focus on Chinese economic foreign policy and international trade, is in agreement.
Trump reportedly has a track record of being a “trooper on the TACO,” she said, referring to a phrase used by a Financial Times columnist in May that reads “Trump always chickens out” when he announces tariffs, announces exemptions, and then announces implementation dates and pushes out implementation dates.
He will definitely be more flexile in making concessions because he cares about stock market reactions more than any other US president. According to Liang, this contradiction has been uncovered by his negotiation partners.
China’s defiant stance comes at a time when it has, Liang added, have its own political concerns.
The domestic economy is a “black box” with no reliable data on growth, employment, or other factors, but experts in China agree that the country has experienced slow economic growth, increased unemployment, and been hit by the tariffs.
Xi can use the opportunity to explain to his domestic audience that the country’s problems are caused by Trump’s policies and that the world is suffering because of those tariffs, Liang said, not because of Chinese policies, as China opened its four-day fourth plenary session on Monday.
Possible decoupling
All of this also indicates that Beijing appears more than ever to be ready to “decouple” from the US, a significant shift in mindset since, prior to, the idea was that both countries would face a “lose-lose” situation, Liang told Al Jazeera.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious infrastructure project that connects East Asia with Europe, has since expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, but it has also diversified its exports to other nations, particularly those that are related to it.
Even when it comes to things like high-tech chip equipment and soya beans, it can find other suppliers or has learned to adapt to that need, Liang noted.
China has introduced a number of national security laws, including its version of the US Entity List, through which it is imposing restrictions on those exports, Nadjibulla said, especially in the years since the US-China trade war started under Trump’s first term.
“Everyone should have been doing their preparations the way the Chinese have done it.” When the US government changed after the first Trump administration, we breathed a sigh of relief, but China continued to prepare, she said.
Source: Aljazeera
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