To put it bluntly, since 2018, every year in May, it has become extraordinary.
On May 29, 2018, the United States announced that it would impose a 25% tariff on $50 billion of goods imported from China containing "important industrial technologies", which kicked off the "China-US trade war".
On May 9, 2019, the U.S. government announced that from May 10, 2019, the tariff rate on the US$200 billion list of goods imported from China will be increased from 10% to 25%, and the Sino-US trade friction has escalated significantly.
Over the past six years, the issue of trade tariffs between China and the United States has basically been the focus of global attention in May every year, during which there have been countless negotiations, and although structural tariff adjustments have existed, the overall tariffs of the United States against China have actually changed little. Especially after Biden took office in 2021, many people still have a glimmer of hope, or think that Biden has changed on the issue of Sino-US trade tariffs.
Facts tell us that three and a half years have passed since Biden's first term, and there has been no substantial change, and 2024 is another presidential election year, and the relatively calm Sino-US trade tariff issue has made ripples again.
From the perspective of the actions of the United States, since April 2024, during the successive visits of US Treasury Secretary Yellen and Secretary of State Blinken to China, the so-called "overcapacity theory" has been thrown, which is to lay the groundwork for new trade sanctions.
In the last two days, the news has been particularly dense.
On May 13, Yellen gave an interview to the media, hoping that China would not make a major response on the issue of Biden's upcoming announcement of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles this week.
On May 14, Reuters reported that the Biden administration will continue to retain the tariff policy implemented by the previous Trump administration and increase tariffs on other goods. The new measures will affect $18 billion worth of Chinese imports, including steel, aluminum, semiconductors, batteries, critical minerals, solar cells and cranes. Tariffs on electric vehicles in China will be increased from 25% to 100%.
18 billion US dollars, that is, the scale of 130 billion yuan. According to the previous calculations of Xianxian Finance, the impact of electric vehicles and solar cells is actually relatively small, and the greater impact is on lithium batteries, which alone may involve a scale of nearly 100 billion yuan.
Judging from the current information, the United States has not raised the tariff on lithium batteries to 100%, even so, it will greatly affect the competitiveness of Chinese lithium battery companies in the US market.
The majority of investors know that the impact of the Sino-US trade war on the stock market is far-reaching, and in 2018, the year of the trade war, the Shanghai Composite Index fell for a year, from 3587 points to 2440 points in one breath.
Now, the new tariffs have risen again, and the performance of the major A-share indices is actually a bit uneventful, although the trend in the last three trading days has been significantly weaker, but compared with the situation in 2018, or even the scene in May 2019, it is simply not worth mentioning. In other words, the impact of the US trade stick on China's economy is getting smaller and smaller.
Yellen and Blinken's successive visits to China last month, coupled with the advocacy of "overcapacity", do not rule out the possibility of further tariffs at that point in time. This is completely different from the situation when Trump imposed tariffs on Twitter, and senior American officials did not react to what was going on.
In other words, Biden is relatively mature in dealing with key issues, and Trump is more aggressive, although neither can change the fact that the United States has imposed tariffs on China.
To put it bluntly, the power of the United States' use of trade tariffs to suppress China's economy has had a diminishing effect. From "comprehensive trade tariffs" to sanctions on key enterprises and tariffs on key industries, the damage to China's economy is getting smaller and smaller, and it cannot even provoke China's counterattack, because from the perspective of normal trade, there seems to be no need to fight back.
As far as trade is concerned, it is already a surrender without a fight.