Cyber-espionage had already raised tensions between the two countries in

2015 when the FBI accused China’s government of “playing a significant role”
in a 53% surge in economic espionage cases. The U.S. threated China with
sanctions, but after a short negotiation, Obama and Xi signed an agreement to
stop government-sponsored cyberattacks “that steal corporate records for
economic benefit.”39 Hackers were not the only issue. Often the Chinese
government was accused of supporting firms blamed for stealing intellectual
property, such as in the case of technology giant Huawei. For years, the U.S.
labelled the company a national security threat, accusing it of selling
equipment to tap or disable U.S. communication networks.40 The company
repeatedly denied the accusations, as well as any connections to the Chinese
government.

Huawei’s response has been simple: it’s not a security threat. Most importantly, the
company’s leaders have said the US has not produced evidence that it works
inappropriately with the Chinese government or that it would in the future.
Moreover, they say, there are ways to mitigate risk — ones that have worked
successfully in other countries. Huawei’s chairman has even gone so far as to call the
US government hypocritical, criticizing China while the National Security Agency
spies around the globe. The company has also denied any criminal wrongdoing.

Trump was especially vigorous in his disapproval of China's "forced technology

transfers," which imply that American companies must exchange technology with
Chinese businesses to gain market access. The practice was long-standing, and many
businesses accepted it as a natural cost of doing business in China. However, as China
became a stronger competitor in industries such as chemicals, computer chips, and
automobiles, complaints increased.
The reasoning was simple: many American manufacturing companies had closed or
outsourced jobs to China due to competition from low-cost Chinese goods. “We've
lost, within a very short amount of time, 60,000 factories in our country — closed,
shuttered, gone,” Trump said in January 2018. In the very least, six million workers
have vanished.” While the figures were not exact, his point was accurate.

Manufacturing employment in the United States fell by 34% between 1998 and
2010, and academics had linked the decline to China's rise in manufacturing. “It's
definitely not the case that all of the U.S. manufacturing job loss after 2001 is due
to China's WTO accession...but conservatively, 40 percent of the decline between
2001 and 2007 can be traced to that source,” said David Autor, an MIT economist.

Wages had risen significantly in China over the years, and according to a Boston
Consulting Group report in 2015, “the costs of manufacturing in China’s major
export-producing zone were almost the same as the United States.”

Others believed that there was nothing the U.S. could do to reverse the trend.

The economic relationship between the United States and China is becoming
increasingly unbalanced. The benefits of trade and investment between the US
and China are important, but rising protectionism in China and job losses in the
US—some of which are due to trade with China—are weakening public support
for the broader partnership. The Trump administration should step up and
extend its efforts to uphold China's trade obligations, as well as reinforce US
laws designed to combat unfair trade and investment practices.