Fleishman Hillard Partner Jeff Weintraub has an op ed in today’s China Daily outlining some of the issues that will confront Sino-American relations at the G20 Summit to be held in Pittsburgh next week.
Jeff points to the recent decision by the Obama Administration to slap a tariff on tires imported from China as a major point of friction that will be playing out at the meeting.
Unfortunately, we might hear a strikingly dissonant note in the otherwise harmonious chorus of cooperation in Pittsburgh. When the G20 meets, Washington and Beijing may be on the brink of a trade war over Chinese tire exports to the United States and the subsequent complaints from China about protectionist practices. That’s obviously of great concern, not only for the US-China trade itself. Because of its size and reach, that bilateral relationship also has disproportionate implications for the overall well-being of the global economy, which is now showing flickers of recovery.
As Jeff points out, the tariff was driven largely by domestic politics in the U.S. It will be interesting to see whether China responds in kind.
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