If people ask philanthropist and Hong Kong property tycoon Ronnie Chan about who is the biggest loser in the ongoing China-US trade war, he would not flinch and say it will be Washington which staged the conflict after all.
Speaking at the currently held MIPIM Asia Summit, Chan believed the Trump administration will ultimately regret starting a trade war against the Asian powerhouse. In the end, the United States would be left with no option but to revive its relations with the Asian superpower.
Chan warned that Washington may only realize its defeat against China when another financial crisis hit the Western powerhouse. He emphasized that Washington's current rhetoric against Beijing is short-sighted and could only result in failure.
The more the Trump administration presses for tariffs after tariffs, the more China will persist and evolved in ways that could damage the United States.
For instance, to decrease its reliance with the US dollar, China may increase the international use of the yuan. Indeed, China has started settling trade transactions using its own currency with deals with Russia and Iran.
Granted that Beijing's trade surplus indicates that it could not respond in the same level with how Washington imposes levies on exports and imports, this trade surplus would only dent China's economy ever so slightly given the size of its wealth, Chan said.
Indeed, the impact of the China-US trade war have been felt in the west with analysts saying as much as 1 percentage point could be slashed from US' economic growth in the coming years, Business Insider reported.
American farmers have also been suffering as they could no longer sell their produce due to high Chinese tariffs. Most of them were compelled to stock their products in storage facilities, uncertain whether they could monetize them or simply watch them rot away.
The United States manufacturing sector has also been bleeding with an activity slowing to a six-month low in October.
Industries, as big as the automotive sector, have also been in anguish. For one, General Motors on Monday announced the closure of facilities in the United States. The car company was also compelled to retrench as many as 14,000 employees.
Chan believed that US President Donald Trump started the ongoing trade war, not because of intellectual property concerns or unfair trade practices that it accused China of doing. Instead, Trump was more concerned about China's growing technology which is rising as a significant threat to the Pentagon's military capability.
Chan encouraged the United States to instead cooperate with China in developments involving the space technology, supercomputers, and other infrastructure. Doing the opposite, he said, might only motivate China to develop its own technology at a faster rate, exceeding that of the United States.
