China's trade war: What's next?
Published 08 August 2023
In just two decades, China has upped its claim on world manufacturing from 5% to more than 20% by total value. This expansion, which experts have dubbed “China shock,” has had permanent effects on some labor markets in other countries. Economists Sanjana Goswami of the National University of Singapore and Jing Wu of the Chinese University of Hong Kong discuss.
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China’s meteoric economic rise after its accession to the WTO wrought deep changes to the global labor market and often lasting damage to communities. For instance, in the US, there was no replacement for offshored manufacturing jobs, which “were the high-paying jobs for non-college educated workers,” said Goswami. As a way of combating job losses, the Trump administration began imposing high tariffs on Chinese imports. Consumers are feeling the immediate pain of the higher costs. “In the short run, it appears that the US-China trade war definitely has not reversed the China shock situation at all,” Goswami said. China’s economy is highly connected to the digital sphere, and it is a top producer of renewable energy technologies. “At this very moment we cannot have a green economy without China,” Wu said.
About the NPF International Trade Fellowship 2023
The National Press Foundation holds an annual International Trade Fellowship workshop for journalists sponsored by the Hinrich Foundation. This year, we welcomed 24 Asia-based journalists to the fellowship at the Hinrich Foundation offices in Singapore. The sessions, held in July, focused on US-China geopolitics, AI’s impact on trade, global shifts in supply chains, data visuals, and more.
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