President Joe Biden meets virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Nov. 15, 2021. Credit: Susan Walsh/AP Photo
CAMBRIDGE – U.S. President Joe Biden’s economic and foreign policies may represent a sharp departure from those of his predecessor, Donald Trump. But when it comes to relations with China, Biden has largely maintained Trump’s tough line – refusing, for example, to reverse Trump’s tariff hikes on Chinese exports and warning of further punitive trade measures.
This reflects the widespread hardening of U.S. attitudes towards China. When Foreign Affairs magazine recently asked leading U.S. experts whether American “foreign policy has become too hostile to China,” nearly half of the respondents (32 out of 68) disagreed or disagreed strongly – suggesting a preference for an even tougher U.S. stance toward China.
For economists, who tend to view the world in positive-sum terms, this is a puzzle. Countries can make themselves and others better off by cooperating and by shunning conflict.
The clearest application of this principle is the gains from trade that countries
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
