Does Trump Have a Trade Plan?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The missiles that struck Syria on Friday night have certainly shifted the international economic focus from China tariffs to new potential trade sanctions targeting Russian companies with ties to the Syrian president, Bashar al Assad. So how does this economic tit-for-tat play at a time when America is apparently preparing for economic war with China? We hear from Pippa Malmgren, head of the risk consultancy, the DPRM group in London and former economic adviser to President George W Bush in Washington. She believes that US President Trump does have a grand plan for international trade and foreign policy. To discuss China's place in the global pecking order, we turned to Professor Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran former diplomat from Singapore and former dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He argues that China will be soon on top and the West has failed to realise it. However, leading China-based economist, Michael Pettis from the Peking University told us he was skeptical that China would overtake the US in economic size.
PHOTO: President Trump/Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.8 | Today is looming trade war between Washington and Beijing, just the harbinger of the inevitable. |
| 0:15.3 | China is about to take over America's global mantle. |
| 0:19.1 | China's really the number one trading partner of over 100 countries |
| 0:22.7 | in the world today. So all the perceptions, the conventional wisdom of the West about China is clearly |
| 0:30.4 | out of date and out of touch. But is it really realistic to say China's about to take over the US |
| 0:36.5 | in economic terms? China's recorded to take over the US in economic terms. |
| 0:38.3 | China's recorded GDP is systematically overstated by quite a lot. I think if it were correctly |
| 0:45.4 | recorded, GDP growth in China would really be 3% or less. |
| 0:50.5 | That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:57.0 | The missiles that struck Syria on Friday night have certainly shifted the international economic focus, whereas looming trade war between the US and China had been the centre of all the chatter. |
| 1:08.9 | Now the attention is about new potential trade sanctions targeting |
| 1:12.8 | Russian companies with ties to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Hassad. The American ambassador to the |
| 1:17.9 | UN, Nikki Haley, said the new measures related to the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons |
| 1:23.1 | would be disclosed on Monday. So you will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down. |
| 1:28.9 | Secretary Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday if he hasn't already. |
| 1:32.5 | And they will go directly to any sort of companies |
| 1:35.6 | that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use. |
| 1:39.9 | And so I think everyone is going to feel it at this point. |
| 1:42.7 | I think everyone knows that we sent a |
| 1:45.2 | strong message and our hope is that they listen to it. Well, Moscow says it will deal with any sanctions |
| 1:50.4 | that they will ultimately hurt the West more than Moscow. We'll see. But how does all of this |
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