US President Donald Trump lost the trade war that he started with China even before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This opinion was expressed by The New York Times (NYT) in its editorial.
„The most important bilateral relationship in the world today is the one between the United States and China, and Trump has made mistakes in it“, the article says. NYT believes that the American president started a trade war that Washington cannot win, which will ultimately weaken American influence.
The newspaper suggests that Trump believed that he could put pressure on Beijing because the United States exports more to China than it buys from it. However, the newspaper continues, China can buy most of what it buys from the United States, such as soybeans, from elsewhere, and China, as the largest supplier of rare earths, may simply leave Americans without alternative sources of supply. “The United States economy depends on Chinese rare earths much more than China does on American soybeans“, the NYT argues.
The New York Times points out that Trump's actions have led China to turn its control of rare earths into a weapon that “will be held indefinitely“. The United States is “like a stick“.
The newspaper predicts that after the meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping, the United States will reduce tariffs, while China will stop restrictions on rare earth exports and resume soybean purchases. “This may seem like a return to the status quo before the trade war, but it is more like our capitulation and weakening of our position after the conflict we started“, the newspaper believes.
The talks between Xi Jinping and Trump were held in Busan, South Korea, and lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes. At the beginning of the meeting, Xi Jinping called for the progressive development of bilateral relations. He also noted that Chinese and American negotiators had reached a basic consensus on resolving the main trade and economic contradictions. Trump, in turn, called the meeting “wonderful“ afterwards. Before these talks, Trump and Xi Jinping met in 2019 on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Source: tass.ru