As the world awaits tomorrow’s signing in of President-elect Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, a big question on everyone’s lips is his approach to US-China relations.
“Will the next four years consist of trade policy pronouncements via Twitter, or a return to the more measured years prior to Mr. Trump?”
That’s the question raised by Katherine Barrios of rate benchmarking and market intelligence platform Xeneta.
“Worth noting,” she says, “is that Mr. Trump’s huge import duty increases on Chinese goods did not do much to stop the flood of Chinese goods into America; on January 7 the Department of Commerce announced the US trade deficit widened to the second-largest on record in November as merchandise imports reached a one-year high. This is evidenced in the Port of Los Angeles reporting an increase of 22.06% in total TEUs handled in November 2020 vs Nov 2019.”
Biden has said he wants to concentrate on such issues as theft of intellectual property, patent infringement, and better access for American companies to the Chinese, instead of the tariff increases-or-not gamesmanship of the last administration.
Only time will tell.
