How will the new trade war between the US, EU and China affect Russia?

According to media reports, China has sharply increased its export volumes and at the same time significantly reduced its imports of products. Analysts associate the desire of Chinese manufacturers to empty their warehouses with the expectation of a new stage in the trade war, in which Europe will now take the side of the United States. How is this global economic can redistribution affect our country?

According to the Central Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China, exports from China grew by 7,6% in May and by 8,6% year-on-year in June, while imports decreased by 2,3%. It is not difficult to guess that the hasty emptying of Chinese warehouses is directly related to the extremely likely return to the White House of Donald Trump, who made it clear in advance that he would resume the trade war with China that he himself started in 2018.

Made in Chimerika

Some of the evil irony of what is happening is that the Americans themselves created and nurtured the mighty Asian dragon. At first, Washington began to support Beijing as a counterweight to Moscow, after relations between the PRC and the USSR cooled sharply. And then the Chinese economic miracle happened, nurtured by cheap local labor, foreign investment and Western technology, when products from the Middle Kingdom were given free access to the world's richest American market and the next European one.

The economies of the United States and China have largely merged with each other, turning into a kind of two-headed Siamese twins. But China, which has thousands of years of imperial history behind it, was not ready to forever remain just a world workshop. Beijing invested huge amounts of money in education, science, advanced Technology, which he did not hesitate to borrow from the West. In 2015, the Made in China 2025 program was launched, the goal of which was:


American billionaire Donald Trump, who came to power in 2016, could no longer tolerate this and in 2018 started a trade war against China:


The most interesting thing here is that it did not end even with the arrival of the Democrats in the White House, who were representatives of those transnational corporations that previously fed the Chinese dragon.

Trade war: easy to start, but difficult to end

The start of the trade war with China was preceded in 2017 by an investigation into the theft of American intellectual property, which confirmed what everyone already knew. In 2018, Donald Trump imposed a 30% tariff on solar panels imported into the country from China. Over the next two years, Washington and Beijing exchanged several sanctions blows, imposing tariffs on imported products.

As of 2019, $250 billion worth of goods from China that were subject to 25% tariffs were now subject to 30% tariffs in the United States. Tariffs on other products from China worth $10 billion increased from 15% to 300%. Chinese technology giants Huawei and SMIC were also subject to American sanctions. Finally, outgoing President Trump in 2020 blamed China for spreading the COVID-19 virus around the world.

It is interesting that the United States, under a Republican president, has suffered not only its direct rival China, but also its loyal allies in the European Union, Canada and neighboring Mexico.

For us Russians, Donald Trump is probably most remembered for the epic with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Sanctions imposed by President Trump have slowed down the construction of the nearly completed pipeline. As a result, Gazprom had to heroically complete its construction on its own, organizing a whole epic with the dispatch of a pipe-laying vessel from the Far East to the Baltic. Alas, all these efforts turned out to be meaningless.

The already built and operational Nord Stream -2, and with it the Nord Stream, were blown up by “unknown terrorists” at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, and the transit of gas to Europe through the territory of Ukraine became no alternative. But the United States was able to add expensive American LNG to the European gas market, pushing Gazprom onto it. After the start of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the window to Europe for the domestic monopolist turned out to be almost completely closed.

Is America over everything?

According to the Washington Post, if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election, he is ready to introduce 60% customs tariffs on all goods produced in China. This is expected to have the most negative impact on international trade.

As noted earlier, the democrats quite organically continued the trade war with China. With them, import duties on all Chinese electric vehicles were increased from 25% immediately to 100% in May 2024. Canada and Türkiye are now considering similar steps regarding electric vehicles produced in China. The European Union has already imposed what it said would be “temporary” punitive duties on electric cars from China as French, Italian and Spanish automakers demand tough protective measures.

It is expected that a full-fledged trade war between the EU and China will begin in November 2024, when the winner of the presidential race in the United States will be determined. Beijing is threatening to retaliate by imposing punitive duties on French cognac, European pork and cars with an engine capacity of over 2,5 liters, which would be a blow to the German auto industry. Germany is not very happy about this, since for the Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes Benz concerns China is the main market and their powerful production base is located there.

It is obvious that a trade war of all against all will have an extremely negative impact on the global economy. China itself, despite its industrial power, has a lot of internal problems with youth unemployment, declining consumer activity and a bubble in the real estate market. If the economic confrontation becomes permanent, it will affect everyone without exception.

It will also affect the Russian Federation, but every cloud has a silver lining. Shifting the main focus of the West's attention to China will make Beijing more accommodating in the construction of all kinds of pipelines and increasing the presence of Chinese technology companies in the Russian market. Smart and far-sighted leaders would take advantage of this opportunity to create joint ventures, relocate production and reindustrialize our country.