April 01, 2020
Global Supply Chains, Economic Decoupling, and U.S.-China Relations, Part 1: The View from the United States
The trade war has defined the current adversarial relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). While President Donald J. Trump has at times openly expressed admiration for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, his administration has pursued policies consistent with economic and technological decoupling. These policies include reforms that strengthen the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS); greater usage of the export control system, especially the Entity List; and threatening the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to force U.S. companies back to the United States. These policies, taken to their logical end, would see the secular decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies and the rerouting of the global supply chains that bind them.
The interim trade deal has done seemingly little to change the structural economic conflict between Beijing and Washington. If economic decoupling came to pass, it would portend a sweeping reorientation of the global economy that many analysts regard as lying outside the bounds of conventional analysis. Yet some Trump administration officials, such as Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, have promoted economic decoupling as their desired aim (SCMP, June 20, 2018; Forbes, December 3, 2019). President Trump himself has “ordered” American companies to look for alternative suppliers outside of China, or to return production to the United States (Twitter, August 23, 2019).
Read the full article from The Jamestown Foundation's China Brief.
More from CNAS
-
Exposing the Financial Footprints of North Korea’s Hackers
Reports
How North Korea conducts intricate and sweeping cyberattacks against the United States and its allies to acquire funds to support its illicit nuclear proliferation efforts....
By Jason Bartlett
-
Don’t Sleep on China’s New Blockchain Internet
Commentary
The CCP is progressing unfettered in a parallel technological campaign: expanding global blockchain infrastructure....
By Yaya J. Fanusie
-
A Divided Washington Is (Sort of) United on China
Commentary
The two parties might be divided on almost everything else, but their legislative agendas for China have a lot in common....
By Jordan Schneider & Coby Goldberg
-
Joshua Fitt Discusses U.S.-China Relations on i24 News
Video
On November 8, 2020, Joshua Fitt, a Research Associate with the CNAS Asia-Pacific Security Program, appeared on i24 News to discuss the potential implications of the 2020 pres...
By Joshua Fitt
