China-U.S. Trade War About to Get Uglier

(Kitco News) - No resolution is in sight for the trade war with China and relations may even worsen, this according to Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been unwillingly to budge on his trade policies with China, but the Chinese communist regime is unlikely to make compromises either, Hanke told Kitco News. The economics professor said that current policies enacted by the Trump administration can be likened to the trade tactics in the 80s used against Japan, which had the largest trade surplus on the U.S. at the time, but where the current U.S. government is getting it wrong is that China is a very different trade partner than Japan ever was.

"They think they can do the same thing, the U.S., to China, but number one, China is a huge country, much bigger in relative terms than Japan was in the 80s and 90s, and we have a big bilateral trade deficit with China," Hanke said. "Now, the Chinese, not only are they big, they're communist...they're not going to be humiliated, the Chinese have a different history than Japan, and they're not going to be beat around like the Japanese were in the 80s and 90s."

When it comes to international trade policies, President Trump is out of his league, Hanke said.

"The U.S. thinking on this thing is completely wrong-headed. We have a president who is a businessman and most businessmen have no clue about international economics. They think the international economy runs like a business so they have the wrong idea about the thing," he said.

Watch the full interview with Professor Hanke on Kitco News.

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This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held TK positions in the stocks mentioned.