In June 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump stood between bales of crushed aluminum and a crowd of supporters in a factory outside of Pittsburgh and made a promise on trade that wasn’t hard to keep.
“If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful -- this is very easy. This is so easy. I love saying this,” he told workers at the recycling firm Alumisource, a former steel plant in Monessen, Pennsylvania. “I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes.”
Three years later, he has clearly delivered on the pledge.
Trump’s tariff-driven attack against the world’s No. 2 economy has shown that expanding trade powers has indeed been the easy part. But as events this week show, winning a trade war against China -- which Trump once tweeted would also be “easy” -- looks increasingly like a more difficult and protracted endeavor than anticipated, with Beijing now showing more signs of digging in than capitulating.
Trump’s hawks have been arguing ever since the president took office that the only way to get China to make meaningful changes to what some openly call a “deviant economic model” is to continue punching it in the nose until you force surrender. Yet the big question looming now is whether that belligerent approach may be backfiring with daunting consequences for the global economy.
After Trump escalated his tariff war on Chinese imports earlier this month and blacklisted Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., Chinese President Xi Jinping called on citizens to join a “new Long March,” prompting echoes of that call in Chinese state media.
“All of the Chinese people are ready to embark on a new ‘Long March’ journey with greater courage and resilience and will never yield to foreign bullying and assault," state-run Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary on Friday.