General

Australian media editorial: The United States has become the "total destroyer" of the international trading system! An Australian website published an editorial entitled "Asian Response to the US's Disruption of the Rule-based International Trade System" on January 23. The excerpts of the article are as follows:

The year 2022 has passed. There is no doubt that the Biden administration of the United States is committed to breaking the rules-based international trading system as the previous administration.

Biden's team launched the Chip and Science Law, which seeks to restrict China's participation in the complex international semiconductor chip trade and production network. The United States no longer pretends not to force other countries to make a choice. The Biden team's approach was touted as a security policy, but the American policy looked very much like the brutal protectionist industrial policy.

The Biden government subsequently introduced the Inflation Reduction Act, which is not worthy of the name. The bill substantially increases subsidies to the U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing industry by supporting the industrial policies of domestic enterprises on a large scale and withdrawing from open trade.

These are a major reversal of American economic policy and a major blow to the rule-based economic order.

From the chief designer to the chief implementer, the United States has now become the chief destroyer of the international trading system.

How did this happen? What should other economies in the world do? In particular, the economic and political security of Asian economies, which are heavily dependent on trade, is closely related to the effectiveness of the rules-based multilateral trading system.

This change will not come soon. Trump took the populist protection against foreigners and foreign goods as a magic weapon to win the political game, which undoubtedly accelerated the change of American policy. The Biden government also took advantage of this political strategy and used the wrong policy tools on the wrong policy objectives.

Open trade makes the United States richer; The "United States first" policy and the "decoupling" approach have made the United States poorer.

William Reinsch, an international business expert at the Center for Strategic and International Trade Studies of the United States, believes that to force countries to make a choice between the United States and China, "the changes in the policies of other countries sought by the United States are by no means without cost in economy or politics, but so far, the United States seems not ready to pay a price for this".

At present, there is no quick solution to the failure of the United States national policy, which affects the good implementation of the national economic policy. The reality is that the United States has given itself a red card in carrying out sound international trade and economic diplomacy and is likely to be out of the international economic game in the coming years.

Asian countries and countries in Europe and other regions (including allies of the United States) have deep strategic interests in an open, rule-based multilateral trading system. They must defend this system from the destruction of the United States while trying to gradually upgrade these rules in regional and multilateral trade agreements. This is by no means an easy task, and requires political courage and clever diplomatic means, especially when dealing with the United States.