Courtesy of Geopolitical Futures:
“The U.S. and China are dependent on each other in different ways, but the oft-repeated assertion that the economies are too interconnected for the U.S. to increase protectionism does not hold up to scrutiny because the dependencies are not equivalent. Trump will be compelled to do what he claims to do best: negotiate a better deal for American workers. As he does this, he will be able to deploy three main arguments in his negotiations with the Chinese. The first is that U.S. dependence on Chinese goods is a matter of convenience, not of China possessing critical commodities the U.S. can’t obtain anywhere else. The second argument is that although the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has been hurting for years and is significantly degraded, a great deal of unused U.S. capacity remains; in the event of a serious economic conflict with China, this unused capacity could be relied upon to pick up much of the slack. The third argument is that U.S. protectionist measures raised against Chinese goods will hurt China far more than any of China’s potential retaliatory responses will hurt the U.S.”
