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US-China Trade War: Complexities and what needs to be done

Held on the 23rd Aug 2019

at 5:30pm to
7pm


Add to Calendar 2019-08-23 17:30:00 2019-08-23 19:00:00 Australia/Sydney US-China Trade War: Complexities and what needs to be done

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From the US perspective, the five main issues that drove the United States to launch a trade war are:

1. The big bilateral trade deficit is suppressing job creation in the United States;

2. China has abused the 1999 WTO Accession Agreement;

3. China is engaging in technology theft;

4. China is misusing its WTO status as a developing country to accelerate global leadership of high-tech goods;

5. China is seeking to challenge US geo-strategic dominance.

Our assessment is that a durable peace in US-China trade must be based on the recognition that the US reaction to these five issues has been caused by the coming together of two big changes in economic fundamentals in China and in the world. We call these two changes the New Domestic Normal in China and the New International Normal respectively. There are win-win solutions to US-China trade war, and they require agreement on sensible rules on economic competition, technological competition, and geo-strategic competition.

About the Speaker

Wing Thye Woo is Distinguish Professor of Economics at the University of California at Davis, President of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute (Malaysia), Distinguished Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, Cheung Kong Professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, Director of the East Asia Program within the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He is an expert on East Asian economies, particularly China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Prof Woo was a consultant to China for the tax and exchange rate reforms implemented in 1994; a special adviser to the US Treasury in 1997-98; and was appointed an adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia in 2005.

This lecture is jointly organised by the Asia Institute Tasmania, the Australian Institute of International Affairs (Tasmania Branch) and the Australia China Business Council.