More tariffs not the way to a deal

In the long interims between each round of trade talks between China and the United States, although both sides would occasionally signal that the negotiations were still alive, it has often been the case that no news is good news.

But, for better or worse, there will be news this weekend, as the US administration has to decide whether to allow the hike of tariffs on the remaining $160 billion worth of imports from China to kick-in on Sunday. Unless action is taken to halt them, they will automatically come into effect.

The administration has been laying the groundwork for putting them on ice, so at the moment at least, it seems that the phase one deal is still alive. China on its part has been trying to fortify the prospects for its finalization.

That China's imports of US soybeans from September to November are already 13 times that of the same period last year shows Beijing's willingness to keep its side of the proposed bargain.

Yet, considering there is no lack of China hawks like White House trade adviser Peter Navarro among the top brains surrounding the US leader, there is bound to be resistance to any move to stop the tariffs from coming into effect. Navarro is shameless in his efforts to stigmatize China.

To support his fabrications about China he has even gone so far as to create a fictional alter ego called "Ron Vara", an anagram of his last name, to support his unsubstantiated and misinformed China-bashing.

But the two countries have locked their horns in a trade war for more than one and a half years; the US leader should brush aside Navarros' fictions and concentrate on the facts.

If the additional tariffs on all the remaining Chinese imports are activated on Sunday, China will have no choice but to retaliate with its own batch of tariffs on US goods that are due to take effect that day.

US anti-tariff campaign group Tariffs Hurt the Heartland estimates that US consumers and businesses have paid an additional $42 billion from February 2018 to October as a result of the US-initiated trade war. While Trade Partnership Worldwide, LLC, an international consulting firm, predicts that with new tariffs 1 percent would be shaved off the US GDP.

The intensified frictions would also scupper the phase one deal, and probably put an end to the trade bargaining.

Halting the impending tariffs, and progressively canceling the existing tariffs in line with progress of the talks, is the way to set the table so the two sides put the ink on a deal.

To replace the former negotiations on a broad deal with more realistic step-by-step talks on phased deals is itself already a hard-won result that has come at a huge cost. If the phase one deal is allowed to die on the vine, all that hard-earned progress will have been for nothing.

What happens during the trade war will determine the future, not the trade war itself.