Trade wars and their impact on the economy were a top topic in the world before the pandemic.
1. I’m still hanging on the trade front
US-China relations, which could not be called the best before the pandemic, are becoming increasingly tense. US officials blame China for deceiving the rest of the world about the scale and risk of COVID-19. At the highest level, there has been talk that the virus may have actually escaped from Chinese laboratories. As a result, US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose new tariffs on the country in order to obtain some form of compensation. Some attribute such a hot-blooded US crackdown on China to the forthcoming US presidential election. China, meanwhile, has said U.S. leaders are trying to blame others for dealing badly with the pandemic crisis. There is even information from China that the virus has already been launched in the country by US military personnel. Against this background, the recent termination of the trade agreement between these countries has been invoked. Trade wars and their impact on the economy were a top topic in the world before the pandemic. Earlier this year, shortly before the escalation of the COVID-19 saga, the United States and China signed something like a trade ceasefire. It was China that, in exchange for the phasing out of partial tariffs, agreed to buy US goods worth an additional $ 200 billion. Bloomberg reports that Chinese purchases are still behind schedule, which has also been delayed by the pandemic. It is believed that with consumer spending collapsing and businesses closing, it is no longer even possible. Trump has indicated that if it is not complied with, the previous agreement will be terminated. A new escalation of trade wars at this point would place an additional burden on the already de facto global economy. In any case, the exchange of words between the two superpowers has become quite sharp and sometimes very chaotic. For example, at the end of this week, officials from both countries had not calmed down and reported that they would still move towards a trade-off compromise. In general, dislike of China’s response to the pandemic is not limited to the United States. “In these three months, China has lost Europe,” Reinard Butikofer, a spokesman for the German Green Party, who led the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China, told Bloomberg some time ago. He highlighted China’s “truth management” in the early stages of the virus, the extremely aggressive stance of the country’s Foreign Ministry and the “hard-line propaganda” that supports the Communist Party’s supremacy over democracy. In general, this attitude suggests that many countries’ strategies could be aimed at reducing their various dependencies on China. Similarly, investments by this country and its companies elsewhere may increasingly be seen as strategically less desirable or even simply unacceptable.
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