US tariff measures detrimental to global industrial chains: Experts

BEIJING - The US government's latest tariff plan on imports from China will bring harm to both sides and the world, Chinese experts said.

The experts called on the US side not to make bigger mistakes, while attending the China Development Forum Economic Summit on Saturday.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China and restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States.

Zhu Min, head of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University, pointed out the potential repercussions on the global industrial chain.

Once a trade war starts, the cost, price and flow of commodities will all change, affecting an estimated $400 billion or more of the global industrial chain, according to Zhu.

Although the trade frictions are inevitable, Zhu believes "a serious full-blown trade war is unlikely," as there is a consultation period before the yet-to-be published tariff list, which create room for further negotiations.

The memorandum signed on Thursday is based on a Section 301 investigation, launched by the Trump administration in August 2017, into alleged Chinese intellectual property and technology transfer practices.

"The investigation, based on US domestic laws, went against the international trade rules," Wang Yiming, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, told Xinhua.

Wang, referring to the logic behind the US trade moves as "rough and outdated," said the results of the investigation were not objective.

In response to the move, China's Ministry of Commerce on Friday urged the United States to "pause on the brink of a precipice" and make prudent decisions so as not to put bilateral trade relations in jeopardy.

According to Zhu, China's response once again called for rational and careful decisions by the United States.

"China never made a conscious effort for a trade surplus," said Long Guoqiang, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council.

According to Long, China has been a major market where the United States enjoys its fastest export growth, and an important cause of the trade imbalance is the fact that US goods are less competitive in the Chinese market.

"Solutions to the US-China trade deficit do not come from cutting exports from China, but for US enterprises to make their products more competitive," he said.

The experts shared the view that the solution for US-China trade disputes lies fundamentally in rational negotiation between the two sides, and that unilateralism will not work under globalization.