Trade war is considered as a form of trade protectionism.

As a country imposes or
retaliate tariffs, quotas or other restrictions against a foreign country’ imports (Amadeo, 2021 &
Chen, 2021). The purpose of this war is to protect its domestic industry and somehow create
more jobs. It thus has a positive goal for a country to eliminate such undesired or “fishy”
transactions from globalization or free trade. They impose tariffs as they give a competitive
advantage to the domestic producers and the prices would be different as the imports are much
expensive as the local products. Thus, results are positively gained by the country as more
purchases are made in the local which businesses may grow and would add more jobs
(Amadeo, 2021). This was Donald Trump’s purpose on why he imposed tariffs on the products
from China.
Donald Trump started the trade war with the China when he began his presidency, as he
investigate unfair trade practices in China and then giving them 25% tariffs, but also to the Asian
nations (Hsu, 2021). After his four-year presidency, the tariffs still remain and the war continues.
According to a study by a group of researchers, Kapustina and et. al (2020), there were four
reasons that may led the trade war between two riches economies in history with the intentions
of the US: (1) “to reduce the deficit of bilateral trade and increase the number of jobs”; (2) “to
limit access of Chinese companies to American technologies and prevent digital modernization
of the industry in the PRC”; (3) “to prevent the growth of China’s military strength”; (4) “to reduce
the federal budget deficit”. With the mentioned reasons, President Trump, specifically pressured
Beijing in the trade war to implement significant changes to their economic system that can
facilitate and control unfair Chinese trade practices that may include the forced technology
transfers, to create limited market access, identify possible intellectual property theft, and to
reduce or eliminate Chinese-owned enterprises (Denmark, 2020). Trump also argued that the
unilateral tariffs would decrease the U.S. trade deficit with China and will cause companies to
bring back the jobs to the United States citizens. However, in a trade war, no one really wins.
Both parties/countries would definitely negatively affect their economies drastically, especially
now having the pandemic. As a result of Trump’s strategy to create jobs and lower U.S. trade
deficit, it started a global tariff on steel, a tariff on Chinese imports, and also accidentally
involved the trades on European cars (Amadeo, 2021). Further, the tariffs imposed caused a
shock and fall of global stock markets and other countries formed other trade agreements with
different nations excluding the United States. Locally, the trade war was supposed to generate
more jobs but reversely increased unemployment and prevented innovations from businesses.
And in the long term, it may result to both the U.S. and international economic growth to be hard
to achieve (Chen, 2021). China also felt the economic pain gained from the trade war where
Beijing has to reduce also its tariffs for its other trading counties as it decreased its reliance on
U.S. markets (Denmark, 2020).
Trade war may be good at a short term view, but may cost more in the long run. No one
will ever benefit from a war, and all may suffer not only by their economic growth and
development but also the citizens’ life. It was purposed to solve some economic concerns but
the results doesn’t show the desired achievements. It ruined the global relationships and its
economic development. Thus, making such large impacting decisions must be thoroughly
planned or researched as to eliminate or prevent such negative effects and destructive results.
REFERENCES:

Amadeo, K., (2021). Trade wars and their effect on the economy and you. Retrieved from
https://www.thebalance.com/trade-wars-definition-how-it-affects-you-4159973
Chen, J., (2021). Trade war. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trade-
war.asp
Hsu, S., (2021). The US-China trade war is still happening. Retrieved from https://thediplomat.
com/2021/03/the-us-china-trade-war-is-still-happening/
Kapustina, L. & et. al. (2020). US-China Trade War: Causes and Outcomes. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338550900_US_China_Trade_War_Causes_a
nd_Outcomes

Denmark, A., (2020). More pain than gain: How the US-China trade war hurt America. Retrieved
from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/08/07/more-pain-than-gain-
how-the-us-china-trade-war-hurt-america/