Group26 Proposal
Contents
Trade War -- the Story Behind the Lose-Lose Game
Background
On March 22nd, 2018, President Trump signed Presidential Memorandum on the Actions by the United States Related to the Section 301 Investigation. Memorandum showed that United States Trade Representatives initiated an investigation on China’s “unreasonable and discriminatory” laws, policies, practices and actions, which may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation or technology development. As a defense, Washington authorized The Trade Representatives to “take appropriate action under section 301”, and directed USTR to level tariffs on about $50 billion worth of Chinese imports. President Trump claimed that the US is under a tremendous intellectual property theft problem, which is, in fact, the longstanding point of contention in Sino-US trade relations. On the next day, the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China issued a tariff suspending concession list and solicited public opinions. It intended to balance the potential losses by imposing tariffs on certain products, including fruit, pork, wine, seamless steel tubes and other commodities, imported from the US.
On April 4th, 2018, US government published the final list of goods subject to 25% tariff increase, worth more than $50 billion US dollars. As a result, Beijing decided to impose a 25% tariff increase on 14 categories of 106 products native to the US, such as soybeans, automobiles, chemicals etc. implementation date would depend on the time US government implement tariff increases on Chinese products, announced by Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council. Meanwhile, China submitted the request to WTO to officially launch WTO dispute settlement procedures.
On April 5th, 2018, President Trump asked US Trading Representative Office to impose tariff increase on Chinese products worth more than $100 billion US dollars additionally. EU and Japan joined US’s consultation request to WTO on China’s discriminatory technology licensing requirements.
On April 16th, 2018, US Secretary of Commerce Ross announced that China telecom giant ZTE will be prohibited from purchasing components and parts from US market for 7 years due to a violation of US governmental sanctions ban on exporting to countries such as Iron. Till now, a preliminary deal of lifting the purchase ban includes a $1 billion fine, as well as a $400 million in escrow to guard against future violation. Moreover, ZTE is required to allow “unfettered site visits to verify that US components are being used as claimed by the company, and replace its board and executive team in 30 days.”
From May 17th to 18th, two sides reached a consensus in Washington that there would be a further trade war and stop levying tariffs on each other. 11 days after, the Sino-US joint statement of terminating trade war and launching cooperation in agricultural field and energy trade was broken by White House announcing to levy 25% tariff increase on more than $50 billion Chinese goods. Same plot happened after the second time negotiation in Beijing from 30th May to 8th June. On June 16th, US Trade Representative Office published taxation list for China, affecting the 818 products of the previous list issued in April. On the same day, Beijing announced that all the economic and trade negotiation results will be invalidated.
Motivation
- I1. In terms of the trade war itself, the world’s two largest economies threading to impose tariffs will have a very direct and negative impact on global economy. Different from traditional news reports which only provide a general description of the industries being affected, we intend to picture those products, fields and industries clearly and effectively. A very interesting thing that has been observed in the trade war is that the products whose tariffs are pushed higher by White House are in cutting-edge technology fields, while the products on China’s fighting-back list are agricultural products or manufactural goods. It seems that the US is exporting products with lower economic valued added, however, China is exporting techniques and components to the US. This is opposite to the impression that the US is dominant in technology and innovation. We are keen to find out in the visualized analysis that what is the truth and whether the impression in public view is no longer the way it is used to be or not. By visually analysing the categories and fields which have large gap between China and US trade balances, we hope to break down the trade structure and tell the reasons of trade deficits.
- The economic efforts that Beijing has made in recent years have kept boosting development in Chinese domestic and overseas markets. We want to use visualization analysis tools to track how the products and services China exporting for decades have been changing. In the same time, by comparing the difference of trade structure between China and US, we want to figure out in what industries the US is in the leading position, and in what industries China has the potential to be the leader.
Analysis Layers
- Respective trade structure of US and China in 20 years
- The difference of trade structure between US and China
- The changes in China import and export products and services
- The industries/products affected in the trade war
- Any interesting insight can be a hint for us to dig deeper
Data Description
- Time: Year/Quarter/Month
- Categories/Products
- Trade Amount
- Export/Import
