Is the US actually losing its economic leverage in the China-US trade war?
Yes. The US is losing its moral high ground. China has adopted a market economy according to the liberal democracy point of view in the last 40 years, accepting that free competition in the market economy is good for the world. Now the US is using its state apparatus heavy-handed to interfere with the global supply chains, trying to win not by free competition but by sanctions and blockages.
The military-industrial complex and a few monopoly capitals may win in the trade war because they profit a lot in the 2022 world turmoil. Yet the people of the US as a whole are losing because of inflation. Their living standard decreased due to the trade war against China. People of China, on the other hand, still maintain their living standard if it is not improving.
The trade war is a loss-loss game. Both the US and China are losing. If look into the inflation rates, we notice that the US has an inflation rate 4 times as high as that of China. The people of the US lost a lot by waging a trade war against China.
One of the aggregated indexes measuring the overall living standard is life expectancy. During the trade war waged by Trump, the life expectancy in the US dropped while the life expectancy in China keep claiming. Now China has a longer life expectancy than the US.
You may argue that the drop in life expectancy in the US is due to COVID. The US is the leading country in medical and virus study and research and has the most advanced healthcare resources. The medical facilities in the US per capita are much higher than in China. The US failed to protect its people from the virus because the US government is using the pandemic for its trade war against China. The US is not fighting the virus but taking the opportunity of the pandemic to suppress China. More than a million Americans died of COVID for the sake of a trade war against China.
With today’s technology and productivity, people of the world can and should improve their living standards as a whole. That’s why China advocates win-win cooperation. Yet the US opts to the loss-loss game of the trade war.
The trade war and tech war are bad for China, the US, and the world. If mankind can make the optimal choices, they shouldn’t have put themself in such a situation. All people of the world can and should live prosperously. They can’t because some oligarchs are profiting from the new cold war against China.
Americans are losing in the trade war. The people of the world are losing in the trade war and in the new cold war against China.
