When US trade representative Robert Lighthizer and his EU and Japanese counterparts announced their initiative on the sidelines of last December’s World Trade Organization meeting in Buenos Aires, they did not single out any one country for fostering allegedly “unfair competitive conditions caused by large market-distorting subsidies and state-owned enterprises, forced technology transfer and local content requirements”.
But there was little doubt about the identity of the elephant in the room. As EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said at the time: “There’s no secret that we think China is a big sinner here.”
The trilateral gathering represents a potentially critical shift in the confrontation between Washington and Beijing. Chinese Communist party and government officials are confident they can cope with a full-scale trade war with the US, which increasingly feels like a foregone conclusion in Beijing. On Saturday, Chinese officials woke up to President Donald Trump’s threat to tax all Chinese exports to the US — worth more than $500bn last year — within months. On Sunday, they were greeted by a presidential tweet admonishing Apple to repatriate its China-based supply chain.
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