Douglas H. Paal

Opinion | The US and China take their rivalry into more dangerous waters after collapse of trade talks

Since the breakdown of the latest round of trade negotiations, the Trump administration has signalled that all-out containment, rather than competition, now guides its dealings with China

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Douglas H. Paal

Published: 3:00am, 30 May 2019Updated: 4:22am, 30 May 2019

Whatever the behind-the-scenes sequence of events that produced a failure to conclude a trade agreement between the US and China, the new reality is that hardliners on both sides have now gained the upper hand over those seeking to find an agreed way forward.

The net result will be fewer inhibitions on both sides about provoking the other not only on trade-related issues, but also on more sensitive and dangerous subjects.

Historians will debate whether China reneged on understandings reached between the negotiators, or US President Donald Trump decided it was politically more in his interest to campaign for his re-election by railing against China rather than defending a compromise agreement his opponents would pick apart.

Other considerations may prove to have been factors as well, such as overconfidence on both sides about their leverage over each other.

There is definitely a cold-war mentality at work that may diminish both sides’ capacity to manage crises effectively

But you could feel the winds shift in Washington within days of the failure of the talks, as Trump consecutively issued an executive order barring the Huawei telecommunications firm from the US market and then adding it to the US “entity list”, denying it access to US-related technologies.

These actions had been delayed for months as the trade talks played out.