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China can tough out trade tensions with the US
China’s economy is feeling the pain of US tariffs. But with no elections to bother its leadership, it is in a much better position than the US to ride out the trade war.
"Sad! And self-defeating," says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. It's now clear that Donald Trump's "ill-advised gambit of tariffs and bombast" is hurting both the US and China. Yet a president who must face the voters next year is in a much worse position to "stoically withstand the pain" than a tightly-controlled one-party state.
Global stocks swooned early this week amid the introduction of new tariffs by both sides of the trans-Pacific rift. Washington imposed duties on $112bn (£92bn) of Chinese consumer imports including shoes, nappies and food. Beijing started applying tariffs on $75bn of US products, including a 5% charge on crude oil imports. By the end of the year there will be levies on "nearly everything that comes to the United States from China", say Quoctrung Bui and Karl Russell in The New York Times. This year's tariffs will raise prices and leave the average American family around $460 worse off.
A small stimulus
Economists have been cutting their China growth forecasts for next year, notes Bloomberg News. Most now expect GDP to grow at less than 6% in 2020. In the second quarter China's GDP expanded at an annual rate of 6.2%, its slowest pace in 27 years. Yet fearful of inflating new bubbles, "officials have stuck doggedly to a relatively limited roster of stimulus measures", such as tax cuts.
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It is easy to see why. Data from the Institute of International Finance shows that China's debt-to-GDP ratio breached the 300% level in the first quarter of this year. Total corporate, household and government debt rose to 303% from 297% a year before. "China is very much past the tipping point where the debt simply can no longer can be ignored," analyst Fraser Howie told CNBC.
China's leadership has instead settled on a policy of "toughing out trade tensions", says Andrew Batson for Gavekal Research. "Monetary and economic policy is almost ostentatiously calm," despite Trump's provocations, with no plans to ease lending conditions radically. Authorities are also clear that they will not stimulate the overheating housing market. "The closer the US presidential election gets, the less incentive China has to deliver Trump any reward for the trade war."
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Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019.
Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere.
He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful.
Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.
