Trump, who has won consecutive party elections, is now gaining momentum, and even if the Democrats' judicial pursuit has not stopped, this does not prevent Trump from imagining his plans after taking office for the second time. According to the Observer, citing the news released by the US media Bloomberg, Trump stressed in an interview with the conservative media Fox News on the 4th of this month that if he takes office, he will not launch a second "trade war" against China, but will continue to impose more taxes to protect American workers and "national security".
Trump's remarks are in response to a recent report by the Washington Post, which revealed that Trump and his team are considering whether to impose a 60% uniform tariff on Chinese goods. The article immediately raised concerns in the U.S. business community, as the U.S. trade conflict that Trump unleashed in 2018 and the resulting high tariffs on hundreds of billions of Chinese goods are being borne by U.S. importers and consumers. At present, the high inflationary pressure in the United States has not completely subsided, and if Trump does defeat Biden and return to the White House at the end of this year, the United States will usher in a wave of more intense consumption pressure than in 2018.
However, the outcome of this round of the US election is still uncertain, and there are still considerable uncertainties about who will die, so there is no need to take Trump's "advance warning" to heart. After all, facts have repeatedly proven that it is impossible to narrow the deficit by imposing high tariffs on China or the so-called "decoupling from China". If in high-end manufacturing, the United States can also rely on the monopoly position of technology first-mover to suppress China for a short time, then in the more routine trade field, the more the United States increases the pressure on the mainland, the more violent the backlash will be, because neither the United States itself nor its allies can strip China from the global manufacturing system.
In fact, Trump, who has a background as a businessman, is also aware of this, but he still forcibly pushed for a "trade war" with China, and to this day does not admit that his decision was wrong. The reason for this is that this is what Trump has come up with in order to "generate revenue" for the federal government. Trump has pushed hard to cut taxes for the wealthy during his presidency, and the resulting gap must be filled in other areas.
As a result, Trump used the name of "anti-China" to impose high tariffs on goods from China. This is undoubtedly a disguised attempt to "grab money" from American practitioners and consumers, and then throw the pot to China. At the same time, it can also gain a wave of "tough on China" reputation, and then consolidate his "America First" political personality, which can be described as killing three birds with one stone. All of this is a reminder to China that the contradictions between China and the United States will not be automatically resolved by the change of leaders, because this reflects the structural conflict between the two major powers, and the overall will of the United States to accept China's peaceful rise.
It is not something that can be reversed by one or two people, or by a change in the attitude of a certain group. However, even if Trump does make a comeback, the current international situation has changed significantly from when he was in office, starting with the strong rise of the "BRICS" and the "Global South", coupled with the smooth progress of the internationalization of the renminbi, the United States can no longer cut off China's ties with the world.
On the contrary, the current global influence of the United States is gradually weakening, and the struggle between the two parties in the United States, including the US debt, will turn into a "thunderbolt" that touches the economic fundamentals, which will force the United States to focus more resources and attention on maintaining internal stability until it one day turns to strategic contraction, which invisibly creates favorable space for China to break through the blockade.