A Study On Sino-US Trade War Based On Comparative Study Of Historical Cases

In 2018,the Trump administration blatantly launched a trade war against China.Since then,tariff barriers against China have been upgraded several times,and SinoUS relations have been reduced to the lowest point in 30 years.In fact,Trump’s inauguration as president in 2017 had a harbinger,because he not only criticized China during the campaign,but also defined China as a "strategic competitor" for the first time in the "National Security Strategy"white paper released by the White House that year.No previous U.S.administration has had it.So the trade war is a wellplanned economic war designed to serve U.S.national strategy and curb Chinese growth.Based on this,the research question of this thesis is:In the context of the strategic turn of the United States toward China,can the trade war,as a means of strategic competition between the United States and China,achieve the strategic intention of the United States?This paper analyzes the current Sino-US trade war through the comparison of historical cases to explain some of the difficulties faced by the current Sino-US trade war,thereby providing another research perspective for the analysis of Sino-US trade war.The two comparative cases selected in this paper are the Anglo-German hegemony in the early 20th century and the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the later period of the Cold War.During these two bipolar power confrontations,one country tried to strike and restrict the other through trade wars.The current China-US competition is very similar.Both the British-German trade war and the US-Soviet trade war ended in failure.Through the analysis of this article,it is concluded that there are three common reasons for the failure of the two.It has been proved that the huge domestic trade war cost makes it difficult to sustain the trade war for a long time.Then,when a country responds to an externally provoked trade war,it must take into account not only the economic cost,but also the political cost,which is often a more important national interest.So the trade war needs to have a very high net effect in order to achieve its goals.Finally,the success of a trade war requires a monolithic combat alliance,and there are always loopholes in the alliance.A country can always resolve the losses caused by external trade wars through trade transfer.The current Sino-US trade war is still going on.It has brought huge losses to the people and economies of the two countries.It is a complete loselose battle.There was no successful precedent for the two major powers competing in the trade war in the past,so this article predicts that the Sino-US trade war will not be successful,and it is unlikely that the United States wants to restrict China’s development through a trade war.For China,in response to this trade war,it is necessary to unswervingly respond to the protectionism of international politics with a more open attitude and consolidate the self-confidence of the "China model".