Chinese media amps up rhetoric in trade battle

An editorial in the state-owned China Daily calls protectionist policies coming out of the United States a “symptom of paranoid delusions.”    Official Chinese media is amping up its rhetoric in the country’s brewing trade battle with the United States.
   The state-owned newspaper the China Daily last week published an editorial in which it called the Trump administration’s current approach to global trade “self-defeating” and a “symptom of paranoid delusions.”
   Earlier in the week, President Donald Trump threatened to impose 10 percent tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods if Beijing follows through on retaliating against previously announced U.S. tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, the first phase of which is set to take effect July 6.
   The editorial cited a recent report from U.S.-based independent research firm the Rhodium Group that found Chinese investment in the United States has fallen 92 percent year-over-year through the first five months of 2018 to $1.8 billion, the lowest level in seven years.
   The reason for this, according to the article, is that Chinese investment has “fallen prey to the manipulative maneuvers of the Donald Trump administration in its bid to present the United States as a victim of unfair trade practices,” noting that overall foreign investment by China has increased 38.5 percent to $47.89 billion during the same period.
   “The approach that the U.S. is taking is self-defeating,” the newspaper said. “The woes the administration is inflicting on Chinese companies do not simply translate into boons for US enterprises and the U.S. economy. The trade relationship between China and the U.S. supports millions of jobs in the U.S., including those that Chinese companies have created directly through their U.S. investments.
   “The fast-shrinking Chinese investment in the U.S. reflects the damage being done to China-U.S. trade relations — long considered the cornerstone of bilateral ties — by the trade crusade of Trump and his trade hawks,” it added.
   U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement last week that the initial raft of tariffs on Chinese imports “were proportionate and responsive to forced technology transfer and intellectual property theft by the Chinese. It is very unfortunate that instead of eliminating these unfair trading practices China said that it intends to impose unjustified tariffs targeting U.S. workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses. At the president’s direction, USTR is preparing the proposed tariffs to offset China’s action.”
   According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Bloomberg, among others, Trump and his administration plan to introduce measures that would restrict Chinese investment in U.S.-based technology firms, as well as block U.S. companies from exporting certain technologies to China, a move that would likely further escalate tensions between the two nations.
   WSJ said the measures, currently being drafted by the Treasury Department and set to be released later this week, would prevent companies with more than 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying U.S. firms that produce any “industrially significant technology.”
   Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a tweet on Monday, however, that these restrictions would not be limited to Chinese firms.
   “On behalf of @realDonaldTrump, the stories on investment restrictions in Bloomberg & WSJ are false, fake news,” he wrote. “The leaker either doesn’t exist or know the subject very well. Statement will be out not specific to China, but to all countries that are trying to steal our technology.”