The sort of use of euphemisms is something that plagues all of our discussions about U.S.-China conflict.

We talk about competition, and what we're talking about is conflict and exclusion.

We talk about decoupling or derisking even as the sort of even more euphemistic version of that.

The kind of thing that Trump has embarked upon is overnight cutting these relations on which both economies depend.

It will be a violent and extraordinarily destabilizing process.

Hello and welcome to politics theory other.

My name is Alex Doherty and my guest today is Jake Werner.

We spoke about U.S.-China relations in the context of the trade war,

and with reference to Jake's recent article in the nation, titled, Could the US and China

conclude an agreement, halting the momentum toward conflict? We discussed why Donald Trump has

somewhat dialed down his rhetoric over tariffs, why the term decoupling hardly captures the

severity of what a breakdown of the

economic relations between the US and China will look like. And we also talked about the prospects

of increased military tension, whether we can expect the development of proxy wars between

the two powers as the relationship between the US and China deteriorates further.

Jake Werner is a historian of modern China and director of the East Asia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Stakecraft.

His writing has appeared in foreign policy, Boston Review, and the Made in China Journal amongst other venues.

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So, Jake, we're going to be talking about the trade war and US-China relations.

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