From what I read, China started the 'free trade' war according to USA. Free trade as in, they weren't meant to impose restrictions on entering their economy and subsidise everything going out. They're still happy to trade with USA but USA wants mutual free trade, not one way.
The WTO was designed to encourage free trade. The problem with free trade is that countries with developed industries will crash those that don't have developed industries. Basically, there is little incentive to join if you are still developing since it will kill your local industry.
What the WTO did is a compromise. Countries that are developing get special exceptions that expire once the country reaches certain milestones. The US was one of the founding members that helped to write these rules and the rules were designed to largely help US companies.
The exceptions allow developing countries to put rules in place to help local industry. From what I can tell China looks like it will move from a "developing" country into a "developed" country sometime in the next 5 to 10 years (based on rules that the US made when it helped setup the WTO) but now it thinks that it should happen sooner.
If they started the trade war by following rules that the US helped to write then ... I don't know what I think about that ...
Yeah, the current US administration claims that China started a "trade war" but they're also making similar claims intermittently about other trade partners like Mexico. It's nonsense, and the lack of economic understanding behind the claims that led to them kicking off a trade war is evident in how poorly the war is turning out for american businesses
> ....the lack of economic understanding behind the claims that led to them kicking off a trade war is evident in how poorly the war is turning out for american businesses
Based on the impact of the trade war on American businesses, you are able to deduce the quality of understanding of economics of those behind the policies?
