Less than a day after Trump’s election victory clouded the outlook for tariff-free trade, one adviser to international companies in mainland China was already looking for the silver lining.
On the sidelines of Shanghai’s biggest trade fair, Cameron Johnson pointed to an interview with the president-elect in Chicago in October. “There are no tariffs,” said Trump, in response to a question about the risk of the “biggest trade war” since the 1930s. “All you have to do is build your plant in the United States and you don’t have any tariffs”. Johnson, a senior partner at Tidalwave Solutions, says this could encourage more Chinese businesses to expand into the US.
Trump campaigned on a platform of tariffs on Chinese products and looks set to intensify a trade war initiated under his first term. He declared last month he would impose tariffs of 25 per cent on all imports from Canada and Mexico, and an extra 10 per cent on Chinese goods. However, a contrarian case has already taken shape among some in the China-related US business community on both sides of the Pacific.