Right target; wrong tactics: the trump administration upends East Asian order

President Donald Trump initiated a tariff war claiming that the ultimate target was mercantile Chinese economic practices. Numerous countries share such concerns about China. Yet the Trump administration’s approach is wrong for at least three big reasons. First, tariffs avoid addressing the most fundamental complaints about China while they undermine the longstanding and beneficial global liberal trade order. Second, the U.S. approach has been unilateral rather than multilateral, weakening America’s bargaining position while alienating close allies. Third, the Trump administration escalates what is an economic challenge into an existential threat, ignoring numerous benefits from Chinese policies as well as ignoring multiple areas where China has been a powerful global partner. Middle powers in Asia have acted collectively and individually to bolster the global trading system and avoid the worst consequences of the Trump actions while seeking to avoid making permanent binary choices between the United States and China. Beyond the immediate problems, the Trump tariff wars are creating, they also generate damaging second order effects that are undermining domestic and regional policies conducive to enhanced American strengths and an economically less mercantilist China.