A high-profile United States trade delegation appears to have returned empty-handed from its mission in China. The result is hardly a surprise, given the scale and one-sided nature of the US demands. The Americans pushed for a wholesale remaking of China's industrial policies and intellectual property rules, while asking China's government to refrain from any action against Trump's proposed unilateral tariffs against Chinese exports.
This is not the first trade spat with China, and it will not be the last. The global trading order of the last generation – since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 – has been predicated on the assumption that regulatory regimes around the world would converge. China, in particular, would become more “Western” in the way that it manages its economy. Instead, the continued divergence of economic systems has been a fertile source of trade friction.
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