The US and Chinese Trade War

As most people know relations between the Peoples’s Republic of China and the United States haven’t been too warm in recent times. US president Donald Trump has put massive tariffs on China for many reasons and this has caused what become a full on trade war.

The History

What most people tend to forget when talking about the Chinese is that they are still under an authoritarian regime. The history between the countries has not been a good one. In the 1800s the US was an imperial power with a sphere of trade influence in China. The US was also a country that took part in putting down the Boxer Rebellion. During the current Chinese regime, the US and China had fought actual military conflicts against each other in Korea and in Vietnam. However since then the US under the Nixon administration had gotten friendly with China and had maintained that relationship until recently.

Recent Issues

Although the history between the two countries had not been too friendly for most of the PRCs existence relations had been friendly. Issues had begun to arise over mostly economic disagreements. Although China is still tremendously behind the United States in economic, military, and political power, China has been growing very quickly. As any country would, China acts in its own interests. Because of this China is notorious for technological and intellectual theft from the United States that cost billions if not hundreds of billions to the United States.

Furthermore the US trades mostly with China and vice-versa, problem is that there is a massive deficit between the two countries around in the half a trillion dollar ball park. Trump has brought this up repeatedly, and cited this as one of the main reasons for the tariffs.

Although at the current moment things have not gone past trade regulation there have been multiple incidents of possible confrontation between the two country’s militaries. Most of this stems from the South China Sea where China has built islands to grow its claim over the sea. Conflicts may also erupt over North Korea, and unstable Chinese ally, Hong Kong and Taiwan, both US allies that China has publicly stated it has its eyes on. Hopefully these will remain as disagreements and not escalate further to possible war.