The recent grilling of TikTok’s CEO in front of an almost entirely hostile congressional committee was a reminder that a hardening stance against China is one of the few areas of genuine bipartisanship. That and an antagonistic stance toward Big Tech, so TikTok actually manages to check two boxes.
Read moreRussia or China? The U.S. Has a Choice to Make.
China has “both the intent to reshape the international order” and the power to do so, he said. The United States will seek to rally coalitions of other nations to meet Beijing’s challenge.
Read moreChina’s Didi Crackdown Isn’t All That Different From U.S. Moves Against Big Tech
The scrutiny intensified when Didi elected to list its shares in the U.S. In the eyes of the Chinese government, that raised the possibility that Didi would then share its precious domestic data with U.S. counterparties.
Read moreTrump Got China All Wrong. Now Biden Is Too.
Toughness in the face of China may be good domestic politics, but it is still bad policy if the goal is enhancing U.S. economic power and global security.
Read moreTrump’s China Tariffs Failed. Why Isn’t Biden Dropping Them?
In an interview this week, President-elect Joe Biden said that he’s not planning to reverse tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the United States as quickly as he plans to reverse other Trump-era policies…
Read moreTrump’s TikTok Policy Is Just a New Kind of ‘Security Theater’
After weeks of uncertainty following President Donald Trump’s executive order on TikTok—ordering its Chinese parent company to divest its American operations within 90 days—the video app that has stolen the hearts, if not the data, of millions of teens has found an American partner: Oracle.
Read moreNo Matter How Dire the Coronavirus Threat, Fear Is Not the Way Out
And he would recognize in the United States today something very similar to early 1933, that in the throes of a viral pandemic, we are mired in a psychological one as well: we are in the grip of fear, and it is paralyzing us.
Read moreTrump Picks the Worst Possible Moment to Attack China
It would be difficult to select a worse moment not just to escalate the rhetoric against China for its culpability in the globalization of COVID-19 but to consider a raft of economic sanctions.
Read moreWe Need to Talk About Death
But, in truth, there are things much worse than death. There always have been. Death is as much a part of the human condition as birth, love, sex, hunger, community, war, family. It is a natural part of the cycle of life, however, challenging that is for most of us.
Read moreThe US and China Want a Divorce, but Neither Can Afford One
Three months into the global coronavirus pandemic, there are growing signs that the long marriage between China and the US—indeed between China and the developed world—is coming apart. That’s prompted “a rethink of how much any country wants to be reliant on any other country,”
Read moreFor Once, Wall Street is Optimistic. That Might Not Be Crazy.
Any look at the news suggests that we’re in the early stages of a society-changing response to an unpredictable virus that will have vastly negative consequences for the economy, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
Read moreThe Coronavirus May Actually Reinforce US-China Economic Ties
In these self-isolated days, silver linings are almost entirely obscured by clouds. Yet should the worst-case predictions of mass deaths and overwhelmed health care systems not come to pass, there’s a case to be made that the way the virus is spreading… China’s industrial production fell for the first time on record
Read moreWill the Coronavirus Bring the End of Globalization? Don’t Count on It
Over the past week, the coronavirus has gone from an Asian contagion with ripple effects on international supply chains to a global pandemic that will plunge the whole world into recession.
Read moreThe U.S.-China Trade Deal Was Not Even a Modest Win
If you detect a note of skepticism already creeping in, it’s because this pseudo-deal deserves not just skepticism but calling out as a dramatic failure of U.S. policy that will have lasting and deleterious effects.
Read moreDon’t Blame Just Trump for U.S.-China Hostility
The Trump administration, with its fixation on trade balances and its view that the Chinese have ripped off U.S. consumers for decades, clearly initiated the current trade war. But the truth is that American animosity to the rise of China can’t all be attributed to President Donald Trump.
Read moreWhat Trump Doesn’t Get About the Chinese Economy
As President Donald Trump escalates his trade war with China, the administration is adamant that China is bearing the brunt of the tariffs. “They’re not hurting anybody [in the United States],” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “They’re hurting China.”
Read moreThe United States will Miss China's Money
Having hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese investment in the United States was a powerful source of influence that is dwindling rapidly and is in fact shrinking more quickly than bilateral trade. Tariffs can be imposed or lifted almost at the whim of a presidential tweet, but creating a welcoming climate for inward investment takes longer to build.
Read moreListen, Here’s Why the Value of China’s Yuan Really Matters
The China-US trade conflict is taking a more severe turn. President Trump announced a 10 percent tariff on an additional $300 billion of Chinese imports; the Chinese government responded by allowing its currency, the yuan, to fall to more than 7 to the dollar—the lowest in a decade. The US government then formally labeled China a “currency manipulator,” which carries no formal penalty but sets in motion a process that might lead to sanctions by the International Monetary Fund.
Read moreIf China Really Wants to Retaliate, It Will Target Apple
Apple has a Huawei problem. Of the myriad issues raised by the evolving and intensifying US-China trade Cold War, the knock-on effects on Apple have been perhaps least appreciated. And not just Apple, of course, but a slew of American companies that have both shifted production to China over the past two decades and, more vitally, tapped into Chinese middle-class consumers as a source of growth and profits.
Read moreTrump’s Trade War Is Making Mexico Great
When President Donald Trump made good on his promise to be “Tariff Man” this week, he sent economists into a lather, pushed the stock markets onto a wild and largely downward ride, and thrilled parts of his political base, who saw a president finally willing to use his bluntest policy weapon against America’s biggest economic rival.
Read more