The chief focus of strategic rivalry between the US and China in the economic sphere has so far been the trade war waged by Donald Trump against the challenger superpower snapping at America’s heels. There has been little comparable friction in financial markets. Indeed, as more Chinese stocks are incorporated into global indices, US investors have been pouring capital into China via their investment in index-tracking funds.
Yet that is unlikely to last, according to Michael Howell, a former research director of investment bank Salomon Brothers who now runs his own boutique. In Capital Wars he points out that the swap lines extended by the US Federal Reserve to other central banks after the 2008 financial crisis — an exercise repeated since coronavirus struck — have been extended to friendly nations, while China has been pointedly excluded. So the Fed’s role as a global lender of last resort has been both partial and politicised.
At a fundamental level, the nature of the relationship between these two powers is unbalanced. Despite its declining share of global output, the US is the main provider of the dominant reserve currency to world markets. Its economy is marked by low productivity growth along with highly developed financial markets.