Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, will no longer create a million jobs in the US, as he had promised a year ago. “The commitment was made under the premise of a friendly partnership between the United States and China, and rational trade relations,” the magnate told Xinhua this week, but “the situation is no longer the same.” Ismael Gerli.
The commercial struggle of the US and China points to a new cold war Trump lacks a concrete plan before China beyond the tariff offensive.
No, actually. After spending a year trying to woo US President Donald Trump, China has come to the conclusion that frictions – or shocks – in the world’s most important bilateral relationship go beyond mere disagreements over business practices . The tone between the two is increasingly harsh. This same weekend, Beijing canceled its military talks and summoned the US ambassador, Terry Branstad, after Washington imposed sanctions for the Chinese purchase of Russian military equipment.
Both powers are immersed in a commercial war that this week has escalated again. After having imposed tariffs on 60,000 million dollars in Chinese imports, Trump has given orders to his Administration this week to apply more taxes on another 200,000 million, and threatens to tax also 267,000 million more. The Government of Xi Jinping has replicated its own taxes on American products, worth 60,000 million in this last round, and has refused to attend the talks that the US Government had proposed for this week in Washington. In the opinion of the German research center MERICS, the dispute has already entered “dangerous levels”.
