The TOI correspondent from Washington: US-China ties are headed for a devastating crash with attention in America now pivoting towards New Delhi to assess if India can — or will — step into the breach.
More signs of the US-China flame-out emerged on Tuesday after Beijing directed its airlines to stop taking delivery of Boeing aircraft. China is Boeing’s biggest customer with projections by the company of delivering nearly 9,000 planes to China — about 20% of the total — over the next two decades. By contrast, India is expected to order around 2400 Boeing aircraft till 2043.
Also read: China plays rare earth card as US, India dig deep
The Chinese directive also included halting orders of aircraft-related equipment and parts, indicating it is ready to suffer pain and disruption to crank up domestic aircraft manufacturing by the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), which has been ramping up to take on Boeing and Airbus, the two global aircraft majors.
Beijing’s blow to Boeing in response to President Trump’s tariff gambit came amid growing apprehension in the American commentariat that the MAGA supremo may have overplayed his hand in trying to paint China into a corner — without rallying support from the rest of the world. There is dismay that on the contrary he has alienated almost the entire world, including European allies.
A viral meme showing Trump saying “I hold the cards” and Xi responding with “The cards are made in China” provided an apt metaphor for the tariff fallout, with many experts saying although both countries will feel the pain from the spat that has inflamed the world, Beijing appears to have more leverage than the Trump White House anticipated, not to speak of greater resilience and endurance to ride out the punishment.
US analysts are increasingly looking at India as a potential winner in the trade war expecting New Delhi to take advantage of the tariff differential. “Is India ready to step in for China?” the NYT asked in a front page story that said while Trump’s trade war with Beijing could be good for New Delhi, the country’s dreams of becoming a new factory to the world is beset with familiar problems — lack of skilled workers, supply chain issues, infrastructure shortcomings and red tape.
But MAGA hardliners, despite being mocked for expecting low-end, assembly-line manufacturing to return to the US, bristle at the idea of depending on India for items like pharmaceuticals after extricating itself from China’s dominance. The argument has caused the US President to go back and forth on taxing pharma imports, first holding back on tariffs and later indicating he will review it.
In fact, the MAGA Supremo’s back-and-forth on the tariff issue on some sectors, including automobiles in the latest instances, has led to allegations of crony capitalism and insider trading as the United States appears to be in far greater turmoil than China and rest of the world after igniting a global trade conflagration.
A defensive President Trump pushed back on Monday, asserting that he does not change his mind but he is a “very flexible person.” Following signs that he’s carve out another tariff exception to help the US auto sector, the country’s $ 42 billion toy industry, which is heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing and supplies, is also clamoring for a break arguing that toys are critical for child development.
Many liberal pundits are now surmising that instead of running rings around China as the White House mandarins are suggesting the US President is doing, it is Trump who is running around in circles. Amid growing concerns about the Chinese President Xi’s high-profile visits to Vietnam and Malaysia, US experts are wondering if Trump has unwittingly ceded global primacy to Beijing.
“What if you get into a trade war with China and you lose? What if, after infuriating the rest of the world, putting tariffs on them, too, you make China look stronger, more reliable, more farsighted, more strategic in the eyes of all these other countries that are now looking for an exit from the unreliable consequences of US hegemony?” the liberal podcaster Ezra Klein asked amid growing self-doubt across US business circles.
But Trump made light of the Chinese leader’s purported inroads in East Asia, saying he does not “blame” China or Vietnam for engaging while seeming to hold out an olive branch to Xi. “I like him. He likes me. I mean, you know, who knows?” Trump said as Chinese interlocutors continued to taunt the US with a flood of memes, cartoons, and videos. One meme showed Xi holding a pair of aces and Trump holding a two and a seven, about the weakest hand in cards.
The distrust engendered by Trump’s trade, tariff assault, and geo-political assault on the world, including on allies, is so great that the European Commission is reported to have issued burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage in Washington, where they are headed to for the World Bank/IMF meetings, according to the Financial Times. The caution is traditionally reserved for trips to China.
