America's trade relationship with china mirrors its relationship with the UN, NATO and other organizations where the united states pays more, makes greater sacrifices and does far more than its fair share in comparison to other nations like china are given a far easier path to, economic growth prosperity and elevated standard of living.
It looks like there could be a WTO (World Trade Organization) lawsuit leveled at china in the future with the USA, japan and possibly the EU filing complaints against china for its theft or infringement upon patented, intellectual and copyrighted property. Trump has been attempting to recruit other countries to be allies with america against china in this trade dispute. Will Trump be successful, who can say.
There could well be other nations who disagree with the privileged role china assumes in trade and business and there could well be incentive to level the playing field more and take measures globally to decrease trade deficits and produce farirer and more equal trade.
Ironically, one of the best things to counter China's trade influence and abuses was TPP, which Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from. China has been a serial abuser of intellectual property rights for a long time, and a trade war was the absolute worst way to engage them on that. The US's recent indication it may rejoin TPP is a sign of just how bungled the decision to withdraw has been, as it's becoming increasingly clear that to even this administration you can't just fly by the seat of your pants and make rash economic policies without repercussions. TPP was about economically countering China by pulling regional economies into closer alliance with US economic interests.
Second, the TPP shifts economic balances and alliances within Asia. The TPP greatly increases the likelihood that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will carry through on Japanese economic reforms, therefore making economic revival there more likely. The TPP will pull Vietnam (especially) and other signatories economically closer to the United States, and thus reduce Chinese economic preponderance. Given that South Korea is likely to quickly join in any completed TPP agreement, these shifts can have a long-run economic impact on China.
It's now clear that the election of Donald Trump will dramatically alter the shape of the world's economy for the foreseeable future. But based on his executive action to withdraw from the negotiating process of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), this reshaping will not be for the benefit of US workers and citizens.
Rather, the bulk of American workers, consumers and businesses likely will be hurt by the unfolding of US trade policies under President Trump.
...
Last week, China's President Xi Jinping attended for the first time the World Economic Forum in Davos and spoke on the benefits that globalization and reduced trade barriers has provided for China. He made a clear statement that the Chinese government is happy to take the lead in fostering globalization, and earlier remarks have suggested that RCEP negotiations will move forward. Unfortunately, this means the rules for global commerce will increasingly be set by other nations -- not by the United States. More importantly, with the United States absent from RCEP, considerable trade will be diverted away from the US.
By abandoning TPP, the US gave up on the IP reforms they were trying to push on China and that were included in the TPP agreement that was originally agreed to and that the remaining countries stripped from the agreement after the US left, perhaps at the behest of China but certainly to their direct benefit in any case.
The 11 countries suspended about 20 provisions in the original deal. Many of them were pushed by Washington, including terms that strengthened intellectual property (IP) protection for certain pharmaceutical products, extended the length of copyrights and reduced barriers for express shipments companies.
So any attempt by Trump at this point to try and rejoin TPP can only be viewed as the complete failure of his current tariff-fueled recklessness and the fact that trade wars are, despite his insistence otherwise, are destructive and not easy to win.
