{"id":361526,"date":"2025-08-21T07:43:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/361526\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T07:43:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:43:24","slug":"as-the-u-s-erects-trade-barriers-china-looks-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/361526\/","title":{"rendered":"As the U.S. erects trade barriers; China looks elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the president has been building a wall of tariffs around the U.S. economy, China has been doing the opposite: lowering some trade barriers \u2014 in particular for developing countries.<\/p>\n<p>That has many of those developing economies around the world turning their attention to China, and China turning to them, not just when it comes to trade, but with investments, too.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s growing trade with developing countries didn\u2019t start this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has been going on for more than 20 years,\u201d said Jon Alterman, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs poor countries get wealthier, they\u2019re interested in importing more manufactured goods,\u201d Alterman said. \u201cThe cheapest place for a lot of countries to get manufactured goods is China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But U.S. tariffs and unpredictable trade policy have lit a fire under developing countries to quickly deepen their ties with China.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust as a business proposition, if your trade with the United States is going to be heavily taxed, then countries want an alternative to trading with the United States,\u201d said Alterman.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s imports and exports from developing countries have doubled since 2015, according to a <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spglobal.com\/en\/research-insights\/special-reports\/china-inc-heads-to-global-south-in-the-age-of-tariffs\">report from S&amp;P Global.<\/a> By comparison trade with the U.S. has risen only 28%.\u00a0Chinese investment in developing countries has quadrupled in a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not just one single company going overseas,\u201d said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, with the Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cIt\u2019s the entire supply chain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Chinese companies facing cutthroat competition and rising labor costs at home have been looking for markets and labor elsewhere. The Chinese government has helped their customers with financing, and without strings attached around labor or human rights.\u00a0But Liu doesn\u2019t view Chinese commercial expansion as a threat to U.S. business.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cEspecially when it comes to technology competition, Chinese companies and American companies are simply operating at two different levels,\u201d Liu said.<\/p>\n<p>Liu said the U.S. tends to produce high end products at the cutting edge of innovation; China produces more affordable stuff with more incremental innovations. But Alterman sees an indirect impact from China deepening ties with developing countries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat gives China an in, and China uses that in to try and block the United States from using economic tools that it\u2019s used around the world to fight terrorism, drug trafficking, corruption, all kinds of things,\u201d Alterman said.<\/p>\n<p>In the global economy, trade and investment are the ties that bind.\u00a0The U.S. may find itself binding a little less.<\/p>\n<p>Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the president has been building a wall of tariffs around the U.S. economy, China has been doing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[1395,126988,27424,3058,3075,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-361526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-chinese-tariffs","10":"tag-developing-countries","11":"tag-international-trade","12":"tag-tariff","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115065638322366133","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}