CHINA/TARIFFS/TRADE WAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “All wars end—eventually. So it is with the yearlong China-U.S. trade war, which now appears to be in its final stages. Tariffs will be lifted, Beijing will promise to buy more American goods and take a harder stance on technology transfers and industrial espionage, and Trump will declare victory. Yet any victory will be Pyrrhic, at best. The China trade war has been both phony and costly—managing to unsettle the economies of the United States, China and the region. Trump has sown the seeds of future tension and distrust, while altering the structure of the relationship barely at all except perhaps marginally for the worse. Everything that the two sides are now scrambling to settle before a summit between Trump and Xi Jinping in late March could have been achieved without a year of rather pointless and toothless sanctions.”
-Zachary Karabell, “Trump’s Phony Trade War with China,” Politico, March 1, 2019