서강대학교

초록/요약

The U.S.-China trade war is one of the most significant issues in the sphere of international relations and economics. Due to the rapid development of economic and trade connections and rising interdependency between states, any crisis or conflict affecting trade relations between at least two states poses a serious risk to the world trade as a whole. Therefore, the specific interest to this topic can be explained by the fact that this conflict has a global impact, and it can cause severe changes in the global economic system and world trade. The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of the U.S.-China trade war, present the key causes and implications of the conflict for different actors in the world economy and trade system, and define the potential prospects of the conflict in the future. The assessment of the causes of the trade war included the presentation of the official position of the United States, which is considered to reflect the main motivation for the initiation of the trade war. According to the official position of the United States such issues as trade deficit, restrictions on investment, government subsidies and unfair conditions of technology transfer in China are regarded as main reasons for initiation a trade war. However, a careful analysis of the fundamental causes for the conflict that were not mentioned in the official reports suggests that the rationale behind the trade war is a U.S. effort to prevent China from catching up with the United States and challenging its hegemonic position in the international trading and financial system. Furthermore, the analysis of the impacts of the conflict on different countries and world economy demonstrated that the conflict caused both losses and benefits for third parties, which are not directly involved in the confrontation. While some single players in the world economy and trade system faced losses due to the conflict, others received serious benefits due to the change of world trade patterns. Based on the performed analysis, the prospects of future development of the conflict were identified. According to the current trend in the development of the conflict, the short-term de-escalation is considered to be the expected result, since the U.S. might be interested in the reduction of the negative impacts of trade war prior to the Presidential elections. Nevertheless, it was found that the U.S. did not reach its strategic objectives as the initiator of the conflict, so it is likely to proceed in the long-term perspective.