How the Trade War Ends

You might be interested in looking at this piece at Politico by Doug Palmer and Wendy Wu. After a substantial amount of build-up they finally get to the subject with these two paragraphs:

While China might be willing to agree to an enforcement mechanism as part of the deal, they “probably don’t want the United States to be judge and jury” of whether they have faithfully implemented the pact, said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A more attractive alternative for Beijing would be for the agreement to be enforced through the World Trade Organization. But the United States might not be willing to accept that because the WTO dispute settlement process is notoriously slow.

I believe that the circumstances under which the so-called “trade war” between the U. S. and China ends depend upon what happens in 2020 and the Chinese are well aware of that. If President Trump is re-elected the negotiations will stretch on, a little insignificant sweetener added here, a bit of saber-rattling there, for the next four years thereafter. If President Trump is defeated, his tariffs will quickly be rescinded unilaterally and that will be that.

In my view the way this particular negotiation is being conducted is wrong. It is being assumed that it is a Dutch auction when the opposite is the case. Our issues with China are increasing not decreasing and the consequences should be increasing as well. China’s WTO membership should be put on the table. We should be talking about increasing and extending the tariffs or even embargo.

The Chinese authorities are the world’s heavyweight champions at waiting out their opponents or announcing concessions that are never actually implemented. We should be talking about decreasing or removing tariffs after whatever measures China puts into place are implemented and not a moment before and settle for not a whit less than China living up to its international obligations fully.