Winton Dong

dht0620@126.com

THE latest U.S. tariff threat, targeting US$300 billion worth of Chinese goods, has seriously escalated the yearlong Sino-U.S. trade dispute.

Such a tariff hike, with the first phase becoming effective yesterday, means that almost all Chinese products entering the U.S. will be subjected to extra levies. In response to the capricious U.S. administration, the Chinese Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council was forced to announce on Aug. 23 that China would also impose additional levies on about US$75 billion worth of U.S. goods including soybeans, oil and aircraft.

U.S. President Donald Trump again ate his own words. While meeting with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Osaka G20 Summit on June 29 this year, the U.S. leader pledged that he would not levy new tariffs on Chinese goods. They also agreed that bilateral trade negotiations should be carried out on an equal footing with mutual benefit and mutual respect.

As the only superpower in the world, the U.S. is always using tariff hikes as a punitive baton for punishing other countries. However, tariffs are not a suitable tool for bullying and exerting maximal pressure on big countries like China. Rather, Trump should tailor-make a responsible, incentivizing and fair fireside speech (abbreviated as tariffs) to soothe a confrontational atmosphere.

Every state leader should gain and absorb experience from history. President Trump especially needs the wisdom to learn from his predecessors, like former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. President Trump urgently needs at least one fireside speech, or fireside chat, to convince the U.S. public that what he is doing is the right choice and in line with the interests of the United States and its citizens as a whole.

When talking about fireside speeches, we must mention Roosevelt. Roosevelt is a great figure in American history and even world history. He took office in early 1933 and was the only president in American history to be elected to four consecutive terms. He led the country through two of the greatest crises in history — the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. From March 1933 to June 1944, he addressed the American people in some 30 speeches via radio, focusing on a variety of topics from banking to unemployment to the fight against fascism. Millions of U.S. citizens found comfort and renewed confidence in these speeches, which were known as “fireside chats” or “fireside speeches.” Roosevelt was not actually sitting beside a fireplace as he delivered the speeches but was behind a microphone-covered desk in the White House. Harry Butcher, a CBS reporter, coined the term in a press release in 1933. The term perfectly evoked the comforting intent behind the president’s words, as well as the informal and conversational tone.

In my point of view, if President Trump really delivers a fireside speech, the speech should be fair, responsible and incentivizing.

As a businessman-turned politician, President Trump should understand that being fair is very important for a country to win and maintain international respect. As the most influential country in the world, the U.S. cannot always blame others and use other countries as scapegoats to cover its own mistakes. It is unfair for the U.S. side to blame China for its trade deficits. For many years, Washington has been refusing to export advanced technologies to the Chinese market in the name of protecting national security, thus making trade balance impossible even with the utmost efforts by the Chinese side. More importantly, the U.S. deficits with many countries have roots in its own monetary policy. Given the dollar’s role as the most important international reserve currency, the U.S. Government has had to maintain a trade deficit by printing more currency to buy cheaper products from labor-intensive countries.

The speech made by President Trump should also be responsible, at least to the U.S. public. If a state policy can bring benefit to nobody, it is not a responsible policy at all. Additional U.S. tariffs will surely pose a challenge to the Chinese economy, but it is totally controllable for China. Despite continuing external uncertainties, China remained the top economic engine with 6.3 percent GDP growth in the first half of 2019, and its stability and resiliency has been greatly enhanced. U.S. consumers and companies will finally pay the bill for the tariffs imposed on Chinese goods. According to a survey, each U.S. household is expected to pay up to US$1,000 in additional costs annually when the proposed tariffs are introduced. The situation is even worse for U.S.-based multinational companies. Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly said that it would be hard for Apple to pay tariffs on its products assembled in China, as many of its competitors, such as Samsung, whose manufacturing is mainly located in South Korea, do not have to pay such tariffs.

Moreover, the speech should also be incentivizing. The Sino-U.S. relationship is the most important bilateral tie in the world. Despite its ups and downs, the relationship between the two great nations has witnessed great progress in the past decades. Bilateral trade between the two sides reached US$633.52 billion in 2018, almost 270 times the figure in 1979 when they established formal diplomatic relations. We know that the Sino-U.S. relationship is now in a particularly difficult situation. But even if the U.S. side cannot take incentivizing and constructive measures to make it better, it should at least not take unilateral and destructive actions to take the situation from bad to worse.

In a highly interconnected world, every country has its unique position in the global supply chain and value chain, thus making labor division and mutual cooperation the most economic and efficient way for mutual development to take place. There is no winner in a trade war. We sincerely hope that the U.S. administration can move back onto the right track to address problems.

(The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)