Are China's trade practices really unfair?

Brussels

THE temporary truce reached by US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the just-concluded G20 meeting in Buenos Aires should give both sides some time to reflect on the issues in question. And the most fundamental of those issues is whether American grievances against China - shared by many of the advanced economies - are justified.

To be sure, unilateral US measures are indefensible under global trading rules. But some pushback conceivably could be warranted if the advanced economies - which have already created an informal contact group of "China losers", including representatives of the European Union, Japan and the United States - are right that China has been engaging in unfair trading practices.