The Elusive ‘Better Deal’ With China
By letting the country into the World Trade Organization back in 2001, Washington laid the groundwork for the tensions roiling relations with Beijing today.
These days in U.S.-China trade relations, confrontation is the governing principle. In an effort to challenge China’s growing global economic clout, Donald Trump’s administration has, to date, levied around $37 billion in tariffs on Chinese products and threatened to expand these measures to cover all $504 billion in U.S. imports from China. While the measures may help reduce the trade deficit between the countries and provide temporary comfort to U.S. workers, they offer little in the way of creating a more equitable and sustainable trading relationship.
Confrontation hasn’t always been the go-to option for the United States and China, though. While the election
