The China-US trust war
'Phase one' of the trade deal is currently mired in an inescapable predicament as mutual distrust has turned negotiations into an impossible mission.
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THE trade war between China and the United States may seem to revolve around tariffs but in fact what lies at the heart of the issue is distrust. In a speech in China in September 2019, Thomas L Friedman, the New York Times columnist and author of the bestseller The World Is Flat, declared that what is going on between the two major powers is not just a trade war, but "a trust war".
Two months later, Chinese Vice-President Wang Qishan himself said that the countries of the world must work together to explore new ways to deal with "governance deficits" and new solutions for "trust deficits". This rhetoric amounts to an indirect admission that China and the US (or, indeed, the West at large) are in a state of mutual distrust.
TO EACH THEIR DISTRUST
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