China Trade War Is One Trump Doesn’t Have to Fight

This isn’t the same China that greeted Donald Trump after his first win in 2016. The economy, once widely believed on a course to knock the US off its perch as the preeminent commercial power, has since revealed some acute vulnerabilities that don’t seem to be going away. And the president-elect seems to be gearing up for a trade war he no longer needs to fight.

Eight years on from the first Trump shock, the global picture is quite different. There’s no longer envy of China, nor the belief in some secret sauce that made its performance superior. America is the contemporary star. Forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, released weeks before the election, showed a stronger outlook for the US. The projection for China was trimmed. Despite the dim view of growth and inflation that Trump propagated during the campaign, American leadership of the global economy is alive and well.