Analysis of the Causes for the Sino-US Trade War

Abstract

In 2018, the US government launched a trade war against China, and later it became a tit-for-tat competition between these two economies. It brought more uncertainties and challenges to bilateral and global trade. The economic conflict was a long-term issue between the two countries, while the Section 301 investigations provided rationales for the Trump administration to launch the trade war. This paper aims to reveal the reasons that contributed to the Sino-US trade war in order to better understand the whole economic conflict. There are some data collected by the US government and some official organizations are used in this paper to introduce the background. The writer mainly uses the literature analysis to discuss the possibilities that cause the trade war and applies one theory the Hegemonic Stability Theory to analyze the situation. At last, different perspectives of the deep-seated causes were applied to understand the trade war. This paper discovers that the trade war between the two countries was not only caused by economic conflicts, but also technological disputes, and other deep-seated issues, including national security and political concerns. All these causes should be addressed to understand and smooth the tensions.