April 28, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode of One Thing Trump Did, we explore the tense state of diplomatic relations between the United States and China following the trade war launched by President Trump. Jeremy is joined by Bill Kirby, who serves as Chair of the Harvard China Fund and is the T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard. #China #trade #tariffs #Taiwan #XiJinping #Trump
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to One Thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle Podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson. It can be hard
to keep up with everything coming out of the Trump
White House, so we try each week to pick just
one thing for this podcast and focus on it, break
it down in a non partisan way with someone who
knows what they're talking about. And our one thing this
week is a big one. We could do an entire
(00:36):
series just on this one thing, but we will see
what we can do in a half an hour, and
that is China, the US relationship with China, especially in
the wake of the trade war that President Trump has
started with China. This month, the President put one hundred
and forty five percent tariffs on goods coming into the
US from China, everything from toys to clothes two appliances.
(00:57):
China responded with one hundred and twenty five percent tariffs
on US goods well. Trump later backed off slightly by
exempting things like smartphones and laptops, but overall, we're in
a very different place with China than we were when
Trump took office, and the Chinese president Chi Jinping recently
embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia following the start
of the trade war, and President Trump had this to say,
(01:20):
we lost with China over the Biden years, trillions of
dollars on trade tridions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And he let them fleece US. And we can't do
that anymore. And you know what, I don't blame China
at all. I don't blame President Chi. I like him,
he likes me. I mean, you know, I don't blame China.
I don't blame Vietnam. I see the meeting today. Is
that wonderful? That's a lovely meeting. The meeting like trying
to figure out how do we screw the United States
(01:50):
of America.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Joining me now is historian and professor Bill Kirby, who
serves as chair of the Harvard China Fund and is
the T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard Bilt.
Great to have you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
On, Great to be back with you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So right now, and we are very early in this
trade war that we don't know exactly how it's going
to affect the US economy with tariffs at these levels.
But one big question is who is holding the cards
right now? Who needs the other more from a trade perspective.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
What do you think, Well, I think you know, it's
a no win game at the end of the day
for both for both sides. The Americans started the trade war,
and so the in some sense they're the aggressors in
this regard. I think if the on balance, China has
more cards at the moment than we do because our
(02:38):
economy has taken an immediate hit just on the prospect
of this war, theirs may well suffer very significantly as well,
one to two points from GDP if it continues at
the levels that we have seen. But you've seen the
stock market creating the knack of confidence in a f
(03:00):
decision making. Above all, this enormous sense of uncertainty, which
is a death sentence for businesses. Not a death sentence,
but in fact it freezes decision making in business, and
it's in corporations. Do you continue to have production of
your products in China which are for export or do
(03:20):
you have them only for the Chinese domestic market? Do
you bring in If you're an automaker such as Ford
working with the best battery manufacturer in the world c
at L, do you continue to double down on that
investment which is the best prospect for American electric vehicles
into the next decade and beyond or not. At the moment,
(03:42):
you don't do anything, and doing nothing is very, very
bad for business, and you will see it in corporate
reports as to how people are Basically, you'll see this
phrase a lot in coming corporate reports or in earn
calls geopolitical uncertainty. Right, Well, the real uncertainty is the
(04:05):
state of mind of the executive branch of the United
States government. The rest of the world is actually quite
certain that this is a terrible idea.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Well, and by the way, it can be a death
sentence for businesses. If there's a small business that doesn't
have the cash on hand to go for weeks or
months without knowing what's going on and whether they can
sell anything, whether they can afford to buy what they
need in order to sell things, that could be a
death sentence for them. And we've heard also about you know,
ships just sitting in the middle of the ocean because
(04:33):
they don't want to actually come into the United States
and pay these tariffs. So who knows how much of
a death sentence this will be for some businesses. What
has struck you about how China has reacted to the tariffs.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
China has reacted probably the only way any sovereign country
could react to it, by imposing retaliatory tariffs of their own,
and by shoring up their own internal defenses by being
prepared to be more poised to switch to some degree
from an export oriented economy to one that's based more
(05:07):
on domestic consumption. This is something that has been recommended
time and again by economists in China. It hasn't happened
over the last decade and more under President She. But
you know, if it were to happen, and if China
were to invest, as a number of leading Chinese economists suggested,
it must in a much better social safety net for
(05:30):
the poor and the rural in Chinese society, for farmers
in particular, then China would have a new consumer market
of two to three hundred million people who are at
present too poor to consume. That's a market the size
of North America or nearly or of Western Europe. And
(05:51):
it is China has a long runway for economic growth
if it chooses the right policies. The United States under
the current administration, it seems not so much.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
One big question right now is whether Trump and She
have actually spoken Trump says they have, the Chinese embassy
says that's not true. Obviously, both sides here know what
the actual truth is. But if we're sticking with the
poker analogy about who's holding the cards, if Trump says
they spoke and they haven't, that seems like a pretty
(06:22):
bad position for the US to be in, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I see no reason why the Chinese would not acknowledge
that they had spoken. The fact that they had spoken,
if it were true, would actually give people a certain
sense of confidence that perhaps things can get back on
the rails, or at least in a more predictable fashion.
But the Chinese side said very very clearly that we
(06:48):
had not spoken, and I don't have any reason they
You know, what can one say. It's not as if
the Chinese official line is always gone it's truth, it's not.
On the other hand, the Trump administration, mister Trump's himself,
his record for veracity is, shall we say, challenged.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I guess the question is who's going to pick up
the phone first and call the other one. It's like
an issue of pride now for both of them. Do
you see you know China or the Trump administration saying okay, fine,
let's just call them and get a conversation going.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, it isn't actually just a matter of calling, but
who's going to kind of give in first? And it
seems that the Americans are the ones who are going
to give in first. You have those enormous tariffs going
up to one hundred and forty five percent. As you notice, now,
mister Trump says, well, they could be considerably us. Who knows.
I mean, the alternative numbers that he's posed are also
(07:49):
extraordinarily high by any historic measure, and would still constitute
the waging of an international trade war. But it seems
like the Americans, who have flipped and flopped on this
issue left, right, and center since the announcement of the
initial tariffs on all the world's countries, seems like we're
the ones who are cratering.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Bill Kirbie, we haven't done an official audience survey of
this podcast. I don't know how many of our listeners
are economists or China experts, but let's assume for those
people who are not either of those things, how connected
are the economies of these two countries right now?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh? They're extraordinarily connected, and they're extraordinarily important. The meeting
trading partners for either countries. It all depends on what
you you know, if you look at where what Americans
buy as consumers, whether it is machinery such as washing
machines and so on, a large number of those will come,
(08:47):
you know, household goods from China. Ninety five percent of
the baby strollers come from China. I once visited a
town that its first major industry, and Jogsu Province has
a wonderful company called good Baby, and Good Baby makes
an extraordinarily number. There's one county in I think it's
(09:11):
in northeastern China that makes approximately I've forgotten how many
hundreds of millions of strollers every year. But that's just
one example. Toys is another example. Those are small things,
but they also make your iPhone, they make your laptop,
They make so much of what makes the modern world
(09:33):
go round. And so we are integrated at a very
high degree. We're integrated also socially and culturally. The large
number of Chinese who have settled in this country or
who have studied in this country coming to this country
because they believe that American higher education is the best
in the world. Jinping's daughter, right, even mister, She's daughter
(09:58):
has studied in the United States, and you know it's
higher education is perhaps the one industry in this country
that is still number one in the world, and yet
it is being attacked mercilessly by the Trump administration. So
and Chinese students are meant to feel endangered. Can they
(10:18):
leave the country and get back in? Will their student
visas still be vowed? All of this is about the
chaos of uncertainty. People can't predict what next to do
with their lives, what next to do with their business
is what next to do with their children? And this
is a recipe absolutely for economic stasis, for decline.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Do you think that the CEOs of some of the
big companies that do business in both countries, Apple, in Vidia,
even Tesla, do they get involved? Do you think in
this spat and try to get either side talking to
the other.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, we have to assume that they do. We know
that another umber of leading American CEOs have warned against
the tariff policy. Even the Secretary of the Treasury, mister Besant,
has said that the US trade war is quote unsustainable.
That's from a man who at least voiced strong support
for it at the beginning, So it's not a there
(11:23):
a cook of Apple is keeping a kind of a
lo profile and is moving increasing amounts of production or
final production of the Apple iPhone to India, the final assembly.
But actually most of the parts that will be assembled
at the end of the day in India come from China.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So one of the things that Trump has said all
along the way is that China is ripping the United
States off, and experts across the political spectrum will say
China is not exactly playing fair in trade. They steal
us intellectual property for example. What do you think about that?
And do you expect that the tariffs will get China
(12:04):
to stop doing any of the things that the US
complains about.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, of course there's been intellectual property theft, but on
the whole, if you look at where, say, you know,
look at the industries in which China is now clearly needing.
Look at the electric vehicle industry they have on the
one hand, the design aspects of many of what much
(12:31):
of what they do? You have one company, the one
outstanding company, is a company that used to make and
still makes cell phones that look a lot like an iPhone,
and they now make automobiles that look a lot like
a Portie, but the automobiles are entirely different. They're extraordinary
new electric vehicles, tight as a drum, handling beautifully. I
(12:53):
testrove one in October near Beijing, zero to sixty miles
an hour in less than two and a half seconds.
They make a Tesco look like a Model T. And
Tesla is produced in China as well, but they are
outpacing in quality and in innovation. They have a factory there.
It is ninety five percent automated. And this is not
(13:16):
by intellectual theft. This is by innovation. And you know
it's not by theft that Coatl is the leading battery
manufacturer in the world. We would have been very wise
to work with these companies in their infancy, particularly Coatl,
to begin the electric vehicle manufacturing in this country. And
were we today to pivot and to do what Europe
(13:39):
is doing, imagining bringing Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers to Europe,
were we to do that to the United States, the result,
I think would be like what we did with Japan
in the nineteen eighties. We invited Japanese manufacturing into this
country to offset the trade imbalance, as we understood, and
(14:01):
those Toyotas and Hondas and Nissans, made Ford and Chevrolet
and christ go to better companies because they had to
compete now in a domestic market with better cars, and
competition is what will drive excellence. Keeping others out of
your market through tariffs or by other means simply means
(14:23):
that you'll end up with less good stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I want to ask you one more thing before we
take a quick break, and that is JD. Vance, the
Vice President, recently generated a lot of controversy and more
memes about JD. Vance by referring to Chinese manufacturing workers
as peasants. What kind of impact does a statement like
that have on the diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well apart from being unbelievably ignorant, because if you're working
in a factor, you are by definition not a farmer.
And the word peasant comes from the French pison literally
for a farmer, but it's used often in not a derogator,
usually not in a derogatory, but to refer to particularly
(15:07):
poor farmers historically. But the Chinese term no mean is
the same. It means simply farmer, and it isn't used
by Vance clearly as a derogatory term. But these are
people who left their farms in order to enhance their
income by working in cities and becoming in time, either
(15:28):
legally or not, urban residents in China, And so it
was deliberately insulting, but it's also just extraordinarily ignorant. You
have hundreds of millions of people who have left the
farm in order to work in factories in urban areas.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah, it does kind of remind you of something that JD.
Vance and others in the Trump administration got very upset about,
which was, you know, Hillary Clinton saying that there was
a basket of deplorables. It's the same kind of thing.
Stay with us, because in a moment, we're gonna move
beyond trade and talk about some of the other potential
consequences of growing frostiness between Washington and Beijing. One thing
(16:11):
Trump did with Harvard's Bill Kirby will be right back.
(16:32):
Welcome back to one thing Trump did exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson. This episode, we're talking
about the US relationship with China in the wake of
a worsening trade war. I'm joined by Bill Kirby, professor
of Chinese Studies and chair of the Harvard China Fund Bill.
One of the reasons this really matters is not about money,
It's about potential military action. So let's talk about Taiwan.
(16:55):
The US just sent a warship between China and Taiwan.
What's your latest thinking about when and if China is
going to invade Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Well, I don't believe, despite what some people in the
government believe, that there's a timeline within China for retaking Taiwan,
be it by invasion, by blockade, or by political negotiation.
There's certainly a desire and an ongoing desire, which would
be true probably of any Chinese government, to see Taiwan
(17:28):
be made part politically, in one form or another, of China.
And of course there's a strong desire in Taiwan not
to become part of the People's Republic of China. This
we all know. But what we also know, if you
study this at all, is that the best guarantee of
Taiwan's security and of peace in the Taiwan Strait is
(17:50):
a good and forward looking relationship between Washington and Beijing.
Having no dialogue, you know, there anyone is picking up
the phone or not having negotiations through half baked press conferences.
This kind of thing does not assist Taiwan's security in
(18:14):
the these it needs Taiwan to be considerably more insecure.
They don't know. And if you look at American actions
elsewhere in the world, mister Trump seeming to side with
the Russian position very dramatically on Ukraine. Is the United
States a reliable ally and a reliable supporter of Taiwan
(18:34):
buying law by the Taiwan Regations Act of nineteen seventy nine,
the Americans are obliged to provide Taiwan with weapons that
will help defend it. They're not obliged automatically to defend it.
And the sense that whether the sense of reliability of
the word of the United States is not very high
(18:58):
at the moment. This poses all kinds of risks. It's
not because it could lead I suppose, you know, to
extensive risk taking on the Chinese side, figuring, well, under Trump,
why not why not do something under Trump because he
won't intervene, rather than wait for the next administration. But
(19:19):
I think that's a very risky process because you really
do not know what will happen. You know, the American
support of Taiwan began in nineteen fifty after the American
government had drawn a pretty clear security line in the
in Asia Pacific, saying that we would not intervene in
the Chinese civil war. But once the Korean War broke out,
(19:42):
we did intervene, and so it's not a predictable operation.
That's number one. Number two is how the situation in
the Cross Strait may be dangerous, to be sure, but
the most dangerous place in East Asia by far is
still Korea. Korea continues to have nuclear weapons, now engaged
(20:03):
in warfare in Ukraine on the doorstep of Europe. And
the one thing that I don't think it takes much
of a crystal wall to predict that unless the United
States in China can work together toward a de nuclearized
North Korea, which would be in the strategic interests of
both countries, and work toward an eventual unification of the
(20:27):
Korean peninsula, presumably under the South, with some arrangement that
the Americans would then in time go home unless some
real diplomacy like that were to happen. South Korea will
have nuclear weapons. Japan can have nuclear weapons another week
or two, Taiwan can have nuclear weapons. Does this make
this area safer? This is bad news for Chinese foreign
(20:51):
policy and actually dangerous also for the United States. And
one wished at the moment that there were real statesmen
in office take the long view of the big issues
facing US China regations, rather than fussing about rates of
tariffs that almost surely are not going to stick.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It's interesting North Korea. You almost forget about North Korea
for years, and then it comes back all of a sudden,
and he's, you know, shooting missiles into the sea and
threatening people, Kim Jong un.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I mean, you have to remember it was North Korea
and the actions from the North Korean leader invading the
South and June of nineteen fifty that led to the
United States and China actually being at war one with another,
not a declared war, for three years, three bloody, bloody years,
in a totally unnecessary war that is still remembered bitterly
(21:47):
on both sides.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So do you think just going back to Taiwan, do
you think that at this point, if let's say, in
the next six months, China said, okay, you know what
we're watching what's happening in Ukraine, and that the US
is kind of backing away from its support of Kiev.
And also, we don't like this tariff situation. We're just
going to go ahead and take Taiwan right now. Would
(22:10):
the US do you think respond militarily?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
You know, I don't know, and I would hope that
the Americans would not say what they would do in
this regard. Under President Biden, he made it very clear
that he would respond militarily. The state of our capacity
to respond at the moment is not one hundred percent
clear to me. The chain of command seems more than
a little bit unclear at the moment. And the Pentagon,
(22:36):
but the risk is enormous because you know, the great
British historian A. J. P. Taylor once wrote, war is
never inevitable until it breaks out, but once it breaks out,
almost anything is possible. So think of what a war
would mean if it were an actual war. First of all, Taiwan.
(22:59):
Of the three economy is US, China and Taiwan. Taiwan
is the one that's actually booming right now. It's at
the absolute global center of semiconductors. It is the home
of the most leading AI companies in the world. It's
the one place when one visits you can feel, you
can feel a bounce in the step of individuals there
(23:20):
because the economy is doing so well and they seem
somewhat less worried about acoming war than some of their
allies in the US or by some in China. We
shall see. But if China waged a war over Taiwan,
China's international economic relations with the United States, with Europe,
(23:41):
with Japan, Korea would probably suffer an irreversible blow and
it would take a generation to recover, or perhaps more.
And what would China gain. China would gain a beautiful island,
to be sure, it would gain mean a you know you.
(24:02):
It might or might not gain intact this great semiconductor industry.
But above all, we would gain a population the size
of Shanghai that doesn't want to be part of the
People's Republic of China. The risks for China are very
high in this and it's not automatic that, as the
(24:22):
Russian invasion of Ukraine showed that the larger power is
seemingly much larger power automatically overwhelms the smaller. And finally,
we have to remember that Taiwan has a navy, Taiwan
has an air force, Taiwan has the capacity to bomb
Chinese cities. Are we going to sacrifice Shaman or Shanghai
(24:46):
for making Taiwan part of the motherland. It's an enormous
risk and if it doesn't work out, well, you'll probably
have a new Chinese government.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Oh that's interesting, So let me ask you about that.
You know, Trump obviously just won an election here in
the US. There's not another one until the midterms in
about a year and a half. But what is the
situation in China right now? Will she face any pressure
at home if let's say, the tariffs start to bite
within China, or if, as you say, a Taiwanese invasion
(25:16):
goes all wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Well the latter for sure. If that were to go
all wrong, either he or the entire system. Maybe not immediately,
but it would be a major major blow, not only
to prestige but to the leadership that avowed it to happen.
The American pressure on China almost surely in the short run,
strengthens presidency. People have to rally around the flag of
(25:40):
their meter when the country is being, from their point
of view, attacked in this economic war.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Look no further, by the way, than what's happening in
Canada right now. Also, yes, right, you know, the US
comes after you. And then all of a sudden, this party,
the Liberal Party that was down twenty points in the polls,
is looking great for the Canadians.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, and you know, you know, so I think the
immediate thing is that it strengthens the hand of the leader.
It also means that the security apparatus goes over time
into looking for any areas of dissent. When when you
have this kind of external attack, you also get stronger
external internal security, in a greater levels of censorship and
(26:21):
so on. That's in the short run. In the long run,
you know, the Chinese economy has serious problems of its
own unless there's a redirection toward a more consumption oriented
economy that allows for the poorest in the country, hundreds
of millions of people to begin to be part of
this economic miracle, which and to have real social security.
(26:45):
She can ping unusually and and really he's kind of
an outlier, but he's the decision maker. He is a communist,
of course, but he doesn't believe in socialism. That is
to say, he he is against a welfare state. He
is against giving people the health care or education, and
(27:06):
that they would need in order not to save so
much of their income for the illness that will surely
come or for the education that they want to give
their children. As he said, welfare ism makes people easy.
Now he may have more in common with mister Trump
on this front than another, because he sounds a little
bit like a conservative Republican when he says that he
(27:31):
does believe it, and it is one of the reasons
why the Chinese economy has not bounced back since COVID.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Let me ask you about another player in the region.
The US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was just in the Philippines,
which also just did joint exercises with the US military.
How does the Philippines fit into the tension between the
US and China.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Well, the Philippines fits into it in a way. Well.
First of all, it's a history both an American colony
and then given its independence and an American ally except
under du Terte under the presidency of mister du Tarte.
But it is also a neighbor, as it were with
(28:15):
the territory that China has claimed in the South China Sea.
Now we have to remember that that territory was claimed
not just by the People's Republic of China, but also
by the previous regime, the Republic of China under John Kaishek.
So it is not an altogether new claim. But this
is the one government that has the capacity to act
(28:36):
and to secure that perimeter, as it were, in a
way that offends mightily the Philippines and Vietnam in particular,
and in a way that has been declared not in
accord with international law. So the Philippines has lots of
skirmishes with China over this. It's not as if the
(28:59):
Philippine is seeking to itself exert sovereignty over this open area,
but seeking, like the United States, to maintain it broadly
as international waters. But at the end of the day,
the Philippines will have to reckon, particularly under mister Trump.
How reliable an ally is the United States? Will they
(29:22):
be there when we need them if there is a confrontation,
say with China, Because a confrontation between the Philippines and China,
either or a small island or anything large is not
a fair fight.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Which brings you back again to the situation in Ukraine.
How front and center is what's going on there, to
the relationship between the US and China.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I think it's very front and center, and I think
both you know, first of all, we have to take
a step back, and I think China is partly to
blame for the situation, as it involved in Ukraine. Mister Putin,
you know, to Beijing for the twenty twenty two Olympics
(30:04):
and signed an agreement with Shijinping of a friendship without limits,
and two weeks later Pudin invades Ukraine. So the Chinese
had to have given the Russians a blank check, not
that they were paying for it, but I mean to say,
to allow them to go ahead, because it's very doubtful
(30:27):
in my mind that the Russians would have done so
if the Chinese were utterly opposed to doing so. So
China relations with Europe have suffered terribly because they are
seen as having helped to unleash this war and they've
done very little to help stop it. But at the
end of the day, today the question is whether the
United States, which came immediately to the aid of Ukraine
(30:51):
and to the diplomatic and moral support of Ukraine, whether
we are consistent and reliable as a friend and an ally,
not just with Ukraine, but also with our NATO allies,
and as we were just discussing with Taiwan, if you
are inconsistent or if people cannot believe your word, and
(31:14):
these are two things that Saturday seem pretty central to
the American White House today, then people will draw lessons
from it. And if the Americans walk away from their involvement,
wash their hands of the people of Ukraine. Surely in
time China will take that as a sign that they
(31:35):
would not be so strong in the defense of Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Bill Kirby, if I were to invite you back on
this show in a month, do you think the trade
war and the tariffs between the US and China will
be gone by then or down to next to nothing.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
They won't be down to next to nothing, because even
under Biden they were about twenty percent, But they will
be much mess. My guess that they will still be
knit and pick and there will be lots of inconsistency
on the American side. To put together a comprehensive package
in this regard will take some time, and it will
take probably more pain on the part of American consumers
(32:14):
and American exporters. You know, I was just reading this
morning that Chinese exports of pork to the United States
this week, simply compared to last week, are down seventy
nine percent. I mean not American exports of American pork,
I'm sorry to China. Ditto at an even higher level
(32:34):
with soybeans. What happened the last time that Trump started
a trade war, Well, it led to enormous loss of
markets by American farmers. I guess they must be our peasants,
and you and I and other taxpayers in this country,
including farmers, bailed them out by massive subsidies billions of dollars,
(32:56):
billions and billions of dollars. So it was a trade
war that we paid for twice as it were, and
we have every prospect of repeating this if we continue
to follow this no win economic strategy.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Let me ask you one more thing. You mentioned what
down by more than seventy percent. We're hearing that the
travel between Europe and the United States, Between Canada and
the United States, the tourism is down something like seventy
percent right now. If you were to get on a
plane between the US and China right now, would it
be mostly empty?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
No? No, Well I'll find out because I'm going next
week okay, And I was there three weeks ago and
the plane was pretty full, but there may be fewer flights,
so it's a little tough to tell that we're not
talking yet empty planes. But I think air traffic is
(33:51):
definitely down. It has never bounced back since COVID. But yeah,
you know, I think the reputational damage to the United States,
and many people have remarked on this. Building up a
good reputation as a country, the soft power of a
country takes generations, and destroying it can be a matter
(34:12):
as we have seen of months. I remember when I
was much much younger, the international reputation of the United States,
particularly in Europe, but also in parts of Asia during
the era of the Vietnam War, and particularly in Canada
also was very, very negative, and I never thought in
my lifetime I would see it so negative again. But
(34:33):
we may be headed there. We need to take the
long view in this relationship. China has been here forever.
The United States has been around less long than the
last of twenty four Chinese imperial dynasties. We need to
have a little sense of proportion, and we also need
to remember that whenever the United States and China have
(34:54):
worked together, it has been good, indeed very good for
both countries. Whenever we have worked a part or have
been in conflict, it has been very bad for both countries.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
That is Bill Kirby, Professor of China Studies and Chair
of the Harvard China Fund. Bill, so great to talk
to you as always.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Thank you, Jeremy, take care.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And thanks to you for listening to One Thing Trump did.
It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode
will be in your podcast feed later this week. We're
talking with journalist Derek Thompson of the Atlantic about his
new book Abundance, which explores our nation's lack of progress
on key issues like affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.
If you like this podcast, rate it, write a review.
Our theme music was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
(35:38):
Talk to you soon.
Welcome to One Thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle Podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson. It can be hard
to keep up with everything coming out of the Trump
White House, so we try each week to pick just
one thing for this podcast and focus on it, break
it down in a non partisan way with someone who
knows what they're talking about. And our one thing this
week is a big one. We could do an entire
(00:36):
series just on this one thing, but we will see
what we can do in a half an hour, and
that is China, the US relationship with China, especially in
the wake of the trade war that President Trump has
started with China. This month, the President put one hundred
and forty five percent tariffs on goods coming into the
US from China, everything from toys to clothes two appliances.
(00:57):
China responded with one hundred and twenty five percent tariffs
on US goods well. Trump later backed off slightly by
exempting things like smartphones and laptops, but overall, we're in
a very different place with China than we were when
Trump took office, and the Chinese president Chi Jinping recently
embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia following the start
of the trade war, and President Trump had this to say,
(01:20):
we lost with China over the Biden years, trillions of
dollars on trade tridions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And he let them fleece US. And we can't do
that anymore. And you know what, I don't blame China
at all. I don't blame President Chi. I like him,
he likes me. I mean, you know, I don't blame China.
I don't blame Vietnam. I see the meeting today. Is
that wonderful? That's a lovely meeting. The meeting like trying
to figure out how do we screw the United States
(01:50):
of America.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Joining me now is historian and professor Bill Kirby, who
serves as chair of the Harvard China Fund and is
the T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard Bilt.
Great to have you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
On, Great to be back with you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So right now, and we are very early in this
trade war that we don't know exactly how it's going
to affect the US economy with tariffs at these levels.
But one big question is who is holding the cards
right now? Who needs the other more from a trade perspective.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
What do you think, Well, I think you know, it's
a no win game at the end of the day
for both for both sides. The Americans started the trade war,
and so the in some sense they're the aggressors in
this regard. I think if the on balance, China has
more cards at the moment than we do because our
(02:38):
economy has taken an immediate hit just on the prospect
of this war, theirs may well suffer very significantly as well,
one to two points from GDP if it continues at
the levels that we have seen. But you've seen the
stock market creating the knack of confidence in a f
(03:00):
decision making. Above all, this enormous sense of uncertainty, which
is a death sentence for businesses. Not a death sentence,
but in fact it freezes decision making in business, and
it's in corporations. Do you continue to have production of
your products in China which are for export or do
(03:20):
you have them only for the Chinese domestic market? Do
you bring in If you're an automaker such as Ford
working with the best battery manufacturer in the world c
at L, do you continue to double down on that
investment which is the best prospect for American electric vehicles
into the next decade and beyond or not. At the moment,
(03:42):
you don't do anything, and doing nothing is very, very
bad for business, and you will see it in corporate
reports as to how people are Basically, you'll see this
phrase a lot in coming corporate reports or in earn
calls geopolitical uncertainty. Right, Well, the real uncertainty is the
(04:05):
state of mind of the executive branch of the United
States government. The rest of the world is actually quite
certain that this is a terrible idea.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Well, and by the way, it can be a death
sentence for businesses. If there's a small business that doesn't
have the cash on hand to go for weeks or
months without knowing what's going on and whether they can
sell anything, whether they can afford to buy what they
need in order to sell things, that could be a
death sentence for them. And we've heard also about you know,
ships just sitting in the middle of the ocean because
(04:33):
they don't want to actually come into the United States
and pay these tariffs. So who knows how much of
a death sentence this will be for some businesses. What
has struck you about how China has reacted to the tariffs.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
China has reacted probably the only way any sovereign country
could react to it, by imposing retaliatory tariffs of their own,
and by shoring up their own internal defenses by being
prepared to be more poised to switch to some degree
from an export oriented economy to one that's based more
(05:07):
on domestic consumption. This is something that has been recommended
time and again by economists in China. It hasn't happened
over the last decade and more under President She. But
you know, if it were to happen, and if China
were to invest, as a number of leading Chinese economists suggested,
it must in a much better social safety net for
(05:30):
the poor and the rural in Chinese society, for farmers
in particular, then China would have a new consumer market
of two to three hundred million people who are at
present too poor to consume. That's a market the size
of North America or nearly or of Western Europe. And
(05:51):
it is China has a long runway for economic growth
if it chooses the right policies. The United States under
the current administration, it seems not so much.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
One big question right now is whether Trump and She
have actually spoken Trump says they have, the Chinese embassy
says that's not true. Obviously, both sides here know what
the actual truth is. But if we're sticking with the
poker analogy about who's holding the cards, if Trump says
they spoke and they haven't, that seems like a pretty
(06:22):
bad position for the US to be in, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I see no reason why the Chinese would not acknowledge
that they had spoken. The fact that they had spoken,
if it were true, would actually give people a certain
sense of confidence that perhaps things can get back on
the rails, or at least in a more predictable fashion.
But the Chinese side said very very clearly that we
(06:48):
had not spoken, and I don't have any reason they
You know, what can one say. It's not as if
the Chinese official line is always gone it's truth, it's not.
On the other hand, the Trump administration, mister Trump's himself,
his record for veracity is, shall we say, challenged.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I guess the question is who's going to pick up
the phone first and call the other one. It's like
an issue of pride now for both of them. Do
you see you know China or the Trump administration saying okay, fine,
let's just call them and get a conversation going.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, it isn't actually just a matter of calling, but
who's going to kind of give in first? And it
seems that the Americans are the ones who are going
to give in first. You have those enormous tariffs going
up to one hundred and forty five percent. As you notice, now,
mister Trump says, well, they could be considerably us. Who knows.
I mean, the alternative numbers that he's posed are also
(07:49):
extraordinarily high by any historic measure, and would still constitute
the waging of an international trade war. But it seems
like the Americans, who have flipped and flopped on this
issue left, right, and center since the announcement of the
initial tariffs on all the world's countries, seems like we're
the ones who are cratering.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Bill Kirbie, we haven't done an official audience survey of
this podcast. I don't know how many of our listeners
are economists or China experts, but let's assume for those
people who are not either of those things, how connected
are the economies of these two countries right now?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh? They're extraordinarily connected, and they're extraordinarily important. The meeting
trading partners for either countries. It all depends on what
you you know, if you look at where what Americans
buy as consumers, whether it is machinery such as washing
machines and so on, a large number of those will come,
(08:47):
you know, household goods from China. Ninety five percent of
the baby strollers come from China. I once visited a
town that its first major industry, and Jogsu Province has
a wonderful company called good Baby, and Good Baby makes
an extraordinarily number. There's one county in I think it's
(09:11):
in northeastern China that makes approximately I've forgotten how many
hundreds of millions of strollers every year. But that's just
one example. Toys is another example. Those are small things,
but they also make your iPhone, they make your laptop,
They make so much of what makes the modern world
(09:33):
go round. And so we are integrated at a very
high degree. We're integrated also socially and culturally. The large
number of Chinese who have settled in this country or
who have studied in this country coming to this country
because they believe that American higher education is the best
in the world. Jinping's daughter, right, even mister, She's daughter
(09:58):
has studied in the United States, and you know it's
higher education is perhaps the one industry in this country
that is still number one in the world, and yet
it is being attacked mercilessly by the Trump administration. So
and Chinese students are meant to feel endangered. Can they
(10:18):
leave the country and get back in? Will their student
visas still be vowed? All of this is about the
chaos of uncertainty. People can't predict what next to do
with their lives, what next to do with their business
is what next to do with their children? And this
is a recipe absolutely for economic stasis, for decline.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Do you think that the CEOs of some of the
big companies that do business in both countries, Apple, in Vidia,
even Tesla, do they get involved? Do you think in
this spat and try to get either side talking to
the other.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well, we have to assume that they do. We know
that another umber of leading American CEOs have warned against
the tariff policy. Even the Secretary of the Treasury, mister Besant,
has said that the US trade war is quote unsustainable.
That's from a man who at least voiced strong support
for it at the beginning, So it's not a there
(11:23):
a cook of Apple is keeping a kind of a
lo profile and is moving increasing amounts of production or
final production of the Apple iPhone to India, the final assembly.
But actually most of the parts that will be assembled
at the end of the day in India come from China.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So one of the things that Trump has said all
along the way is that China is ripping the United
States off, and experts across the political spectrum will say
China is not exactly playing fair in trade. They steal
us intellectual property for example. What do you think about that?
And do you expect that the tariffs will get China
(12:04):
to stop doing any of the things that the US
complains about.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, of course there's been intellectual property theft, but on
the whole, if you look at where, say, you know,
look at the industries in which China is now clearly needing.
Look at the electric vehicle industry they have on the
one hand, the design aspects of many of what much
(12:31):
of what they do? You have one company, the one
outstanding company, is a company that used to make and
still makes cell phones that look a lot like an iPhone,
and they now make automobiles that look a lot like
a Portie, but the automobiles are entirely different. They're extraordinary
new electric vehicles, tight as a drum, handling beautifully. I
(12:53):
testrove one in October near Beijing, zero to sixty miles
an hour in less than two and a half seconds.
They make a Tesco look like a Model T. And
Tesla is produced in China as well, but they are
outpacing in quality and in innovation. They have a factory there.
It is ninety five percent automated. And this is not
(13:16):
by intellectual theft. This is by innovation. And you know
it's not by theft that Coatl is the leading battery
manufacturer in the world. We would have been very wise
to work with these companies in their infancy, particularly Coatl,
to begin the electric vehicle manufacturing in this country. And
were we today to pivot and to do what Europe
(13:39):
is doing, imagining bringing Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers to Europe,
were we to do that to the United States, the result,
I think would be like what we did with Japan
in the nineteen eighties. We invited Japanese manufacturing into this
country to offset the trade imbalance, as we understood, and
(14:01):
those Toyotas and Hondas and Nissans, made Ford and Chevrolet
and christ go to better companies because they had to
compete now in a domestic market with better cars, and
competition is what will drive excellence. Keeping others out of
your market through tariffs or by other means simply means
(14:23):
that you'll end up with less good stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
I want to ask you one more thing before we
take a quick break, and that is JD. Vance, the
Vice President, recently generated a lot of controversy and more
memes about JD. Vance by referring to Chinese manufacturing workers
as peasants. What kind of impact does a statement like
that have on the diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well apart from being unbelievably ignorant, because if you're working
in a factor, you are by definition not a farmer.
And the word peasant comes from the French pison literally
for a farmer, but it's used often in not a derogator,
usually not in a derogatory, but to refer to particularly
(15:07):
poor farmers historically. But the Chinese term no mean is
the same. It means simply farmer, and it isn't used
by Vance clearly as a derogatory term. But these are
people who left their farms in order to enhance their
income by working in cities and becoming in time, either
(15:28):
legally or not, urban residents in China, And so it
was deliberately insulting, but it's also just extraordinarily ignorant. You
have hundreds of millions of people who have left the
farm in order to work in factories in urban areas.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah, it does kind of remind you of something that JD.
Vance and others in the Trump administration got very upset about,
which was, you know, Hillary Clinton saying that there was
a basket of deplorables. It's the same kind of thing.
Stay with us, because in a moment, we're gonna move
beyond trade and talk about some of the other potential
consequences of growing frostiness between Washington and Beijing. One thing
(16:11):
Trump did with Harvard's Bill Kirby will be right back.
(16:32):
Welcome back to one thing Trump did exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson. This episode, we're talking
about the US relationship with China in the wake of
a worsening trade war. I'm joined by Bill Kirby, professor
of Chinese Studies and chair of the Harvard China Fund Bill.
One of the reasons this really matters is not about money,
It's about potential military action. So let's talk about Taiwan.
(16:55):
The US just sent a warship between China and Taiwan.
What's your latest thinking about when and if China is
going to invade Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Well, I don't believe, despite what some people in the
government believe, that there's a timeline within China for retaking Taiwan,
be it by invasion, by blockade, or by political negotiation.
There's certainly a desire and an ongoing desire, which would
be true probably of any Chinese government, to see Taiwan
(17:28):
be made part politically, in one form or another, of China.
And of course there's a strong desire in Taiwan not
to become part of the People's Republic of China. This
we all know. But what we also know, if you
study this at all, is that the best guarantee of
Taiwan's security and of peace in the Taiwan Strait is
(17:50):
a good and forward looking relationship between Washington and Beijing.
Having no dialogue, you know, there anyone is picking up
the phone or not having negotiations through half baked press conferences.
This kind of thing does not assist Taiwan's security in
(18:14):
the these it needs Taiwan to be considerably more insecure.
They don't know. And if you look at American actions
elsewhere in the world, mister Trump seeming to side with
the Russian position very dramatically on Ukraine. Is the United
States a reliable ally and a reliable supporter of Taiwan
(18:34):
buying law by the Taiwan Regations Act of nineteen seventy nine,
the Americans are obliged to provide Taiwan with weapons that
will help defend it. They're not obliged automatically to defend it.
And the sense that whether the sense of reliability of
the word of the United States is not very high
(18:58):
at the moment. This poses all kinds of risks. It's
not because it could lead I suppose, you know, to
extensive risk taking on the Chinese side, figuring, well, under Trump,
why not why not do something under Trump because he
won't intervene, rather than wait for the next administration. But
(19:19):
I think that's a very risky process because you really
do not know what will happen. You know, the American
support of Taiwan began in nineteen fifty after the American
government had drawn a pretty clear security line in the
in Asia Pacific, saying that we would not intervene in
the Chinese civil war. But once the Korean War broke out,
(19:42):
we did intervene, and so it's not a predictable operation.
That's number one. Number two is how the situation in
the Cross Strait may be dangerous, to be sure, but
the most dangerous place in East Asia by far is
still Korea. Korea continues to have nuclear weapons, now engaged
(20:03):
in warfare in Ukraine on the doorstep of Europe. And
the one thing that I don't think it takes much
of a crystal wall to predict that unless the United
States in China can work together toward a de nuclearized
North Korea, which would be in the strategic interests of
both countries, and work toward an eventual unification of the
(20:27):
Korean peninsula, presumably under the South, with some arrangement that
the Americans would then in time go home unless some
real diplomacy like that were to happen. South Korea will
have nuclear weapons. Japan can have nuclear weapons another week
or two, Taiwan can have nuclear weapons. Does this make
this area safer? This is bad news for Chinese foreign
(20:51):
policy and actually dangerous also for the United States. And
one wished at the moment that there were real statesmen
in office take the long view of the big issues
facing US China regations, rather than fussing about rates of
tariffs that almost surely are not going to stick.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It's interesting North Korea. You almost forget about North Korea
for years, and then it comes back all of a sudden,
and he's, you know, shooting missiles into the sea and
threatening people, Kim Jong un.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I mean, you have to remember it was North Korea
and the actions from the North Korean leader invading the
South and June of nineteen fifty that led to the
United States and China actually being at war one with another,
not a declared war, for three years, three bloody, bloody years,
in a totally unnecessary war that is still remembered bitterly
(21:47):
on both sides.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So do you think just going back to Taiwan, do
you think that at this point, if let's say, in
the next six months, China said, okay, you know what
we're watching what's happening in Ukraine, and that the US
is kind of backing away from its support of Kiev.
And also, we don't like this tariff situation. We're just
going to go ahead and take Taiwan right now. Would
(22:10):
the US do you think respond militarily?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
You know, I don't know, and I would hope that
the Americans would not say what they would do in
this regard. Under President Biden, he made it very clear
that he would respond militarily. The state of our capacity
to respond at the moment is not one hundred percent
clear to me. The chain of command seems more than
a little bit unclear at the moment. And the Pentagon,
(22:36):
but the risk is enormous because you know, the great
British historian A. J. P. Taylor once wrote, war is
never inevitable until it breaks out, but once it breaks out,
almost anything is possible. So think of what a war
would mean if it were an actual war. First of all, Taiwan.
(22:59):
Of the three economy is US, China and Taiwan. Taiwan
is the one that's actually booming right now. It's at
the absolute global center of semiconductors. It is the home
of the most leading AI companies in the world. It's
the one place when one visits you can feel, you
can feel a bounce in the step of individuals there
(23:20):
because the economy is doing so well and they seem
somewhat less worried about acoming war than some of their
allies in the US or by some in China. We
shall see. But if China waged a war over Taiwan,
China's international economic relations with the United States, with Europe,
(23:41):
with Japan, Korea would probably suffer an irreversible blow and
it would take a generation to recover, or perhaps more.
And what would China gain. China would gain a beautiful island,
to be sure, it would gain mean a you know you.
(24:02):
It might or might not gain intact this great semiconductor industry.
But above all, we would gain a population the size
of Shanghai that doesn't want to be part of the
People's Republic of China. The risks for China are very
high in this and it's not automatic that, as the
(24:22):
Russian invasion of Ukraine showed that the larger power is
seemingly much larger power automatically overwhelms the smaller. And finally,
we have to remember that Taiwan has a navy, Taiwan
has an air force, Taiwan has the capacity to bomb
Chinese cities. Are we going to sacrifice Shaman or Shanghai
(24:46):
for making Taiwan part of the motherland. It's an enormous
risk and if it doesn't work out, well, you'll probably
have a new Chinese government.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Oh that's interesting, So let me ask you about that.
You know, Trump obviously just won an election here in
the US. There's not another one until the midterms in
about a year and a half. But what is the
situation in China right now? Will she face any pressure
at home if let's say, the tariffs start to bite
within China, or if, as you say, a Taiwanese invasion
(25:16):
goes all wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Well the latter for sure. If that were to go
all wrong, either he or the entire system. Maybe not immediately,
but it would be a major major blow, not only
to prestige but to the leadership that avowed it to happen.
The American pressure on China almost surely in the short run,
strengthens presidency. People have to rally around the flag of
(25:40):
their meter when the country is being, from their point
of view, attacked in this economic war.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Look no further, by the way, than what's happening in
Canada right now. Also, yes, right, you know, the US
comes after you. And then all of a sudden, this party,
the Liberal Party that was down twenty points in the polls,
is looking great for the Canadians.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, and you know, you know, so I think the
immediate thing is that it strengthens the hand of the leader.
It also means that the security apparatus goes over time
into looking for any areas of dissent. When when you
have this kind of external attack, you also get stronger
external internal security, in a greater levels of censorship and
(26:21):
so on. That's in the short run. In the long run,
you know, the Chinese economy has serious problems of its
own unless there's a redirection toward a more consumption oriented
economy that allows for the poorest in the country, hundreds
of millions of people to begin to be part of
this economic miracle, which and to have real social security.
(26:45):
She can ping unusually and and really he's kind of
an outlier, but he's the decision maker. He is a communist,
of course, but he doesn't believe in socialism. That is
to say, he he is against a welfare state. He
is against giving people the health care or education, and
(27:06):
that they would need in order not to save so
much of their income for the illness that will surely
come or for the education that they want to give
their children. As he said, welfare ism makes people easy.
Now he may have more in common with mister Trump
on this front than another, because he sounds a little
bit like a conservative Republican when he says that he
(27:31):
does believe it, and it is one of the reasons
why the Chinese economy has not bounced back since COVID.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Let me ask you about another player in the region.
The US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was just in the Philippines,
which also just did joint exercises with the US military.
How does the Philippines fit into the tension between the
US and China.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Well, the Philippines fits into it in a way. Well.
First of all, it's a history both an American colony
and then given its independence and an American ally except
under du Terte under the presidency of mister du Tarte.
But it is also a neighbor, as it were with
(28:15):
the territory that China has claimed in the South China Sea.
Now we have to remember that that territory was claimed
not just by the People's Republic of China, but also
by the previous regime, the Republic of China under John Kaishek.
So it is not an altogether new claim. But this
is the one government that has the capacity to act
(28:36):
and to secure that perimeter, as it were, in a
way that offends mightily the Philippines and Vietnam in particular,
and in a way that has been declared not in
accord with international law. So the Philippines has lots of
skirmishes with China over this. It's not as if the
(28:59):
Philippine is seeking to itself exert sovereignty over this open area,
but seeking, like the United States, to maintain it broadly
as international waters. But at the end of the day,
the Philippines will have to reckon, particularly under mister Trump.
How reliable an ally is the United States? Will they
(29:22):
be there when we need them if there is a confrontation,
say with China, Because a confrontation between the Philippines and China,
either or a small island or anything large is not
a fair fight.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Which brings you back again to the situation in Ukraine.
How front and center is what's going on there, to
the relationship between the US and China.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I think it's very front and center, and I think
both you know, first of all, we have to take
a step back, and I think China is partly to
blame for the situation, as it involved in Ukraine. Mister Putin,
you know, to Beijing for the twenty twenty two Olympics
(30:04):
and signed an agreement with Shijinping of a friendship without limits,
and two weeks later Pudin invades Ukraine. So the Chinese
had to have given the Russians a blank check, not
that they were paying for it, but I mean to say,
to allow them to go ahead, because it's very doubtful
(30:27):
in my mind that the Russians would have done so
if the Chinese were utterly opposed to doing so. So
China relations with Europe have suffered terribly because they are
seen as having helped to unleash this war and they've
done very little to help stop it. But at the
end of the day, today the question is whether the
United States, which came immediately to the aid of Ukraine
(30:51):
and to the diplomatic and moral support of Ukraine, whether
we are consistent and reliable as a friend and an ally,
not just with Ukraine, but also with our NATO allies,
and as we were just discussing with Taiwan, if you
are inconsistent or if people cannot believe your word, and
(31:14):
these are two things that Saturday seem pretty central to
the American White House today, then people will draw lessons
from it. And if the Americans walk away from their involvement,
wash their hands of the people of Ukraine. Surely in
time China will take that as a sign that they
(31:35):
would not be so strong in the defense of Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Bill Kirby, if I were to invite you back on
this show in a month, do you think the trade
war and the tariffs between the US and China will
be gone by then or down to next to nothing.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
They won't be down to next to nothing, because even
under Biden they were about twenty percent, But they will
be much mess. My guess that they will still be
knit and pick and there will be lots of inconsistency
on the American side. To put together a comprehensive package
in this regard will take some time, and it will
take probably more pain on the part of American consumers
(32:14):
and American exporters. You know, I was just reading this
morning that Chinese exports of pork to the United States
this week, simply compared to last week, are down seventy
nine percent. I mean not American exports of American pork,
I'm sorry to China. Ditto at an even higher level
(32:34):
with soybeans. What happened the last time that Trump started
a trade war, Well, it led to enormous loss of
markets by American farmers. I guess they must be our peasants,
and you and I and other taxpayers in this country,
including farmers, bailed them out by massive subsidies billions of dollars,
(32:56):
billions and billions of dollars. So it was a trade
war that we paid for twice as it were, and
we have every prospect of repeating this if we continue
to follow this no win economic strategy.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Let me ask you one more thing. You mentioned what
down by more than seventy percent. We're hearing that the
travel between Europe and the United States, Between Canada and
the United States, the tourism is down something like seventy
percent right now. If you were to get on a
plane between the US and China right now, would it
be mostly empty?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
No? No, Well I'll find out because I'm going next
week okay, And I was there three weeks ago and
the plane was pretty full, but there may be fewer flights,
so it's a little tough to tell that we're not
talking yet empty planes. But I think air traffic is
(33:51):
definitely down. It has never bounced back since COVID. But yeah,
you know, I think the reputational damage to the United States,
and many people have remarked on this. Building up a
good reputation as a country, the soft power of a
country takes generations, and destroying it can be a matter
(34:12):
as we have seen of months. I remember when I
was much much younger, the international reputation of the United States,
particularly in Europe, but also in parts of Asia during
the era of the Vietnam War, and particularly in Canada
also was very, very negative, and I never thought in
my lifetime I would see it so negative again. But
(34:33):
we may be headed there. We need to take the
long view in this relationship. China has been here forever.
The United States has been around less long than the
last of twenty four Chinese imperial dynasties. We need to
have a little sense of proportion, and we also need
to remember that whenever the United States and China have
(34:54):
worked together, it has been good, indeed very good for
both countries. Whenever we have worked a part or have
been in conflict, it has been very bad for both countries.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
That is Bill Kirby, Professor of China Studies and Chair
of the Harvard China Fund. Bill, so great to talk
to you as always.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Thank you, Jeremy, take care.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
And thanks to you for listening to One Thing Trump did.
It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode
will be in your podcast feed later this week. We're
talking with journalist Derek Thompson of the Atlantic about his
new book Abundance, which explores our nation's lack of progress
on key issues like affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.
If you like this podcast, rate it, write a review.
Our theme music was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
(35:38):
Talk to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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