The US–China ‘decoupling’ would be a messy divorce

The economic alliance is now hanging on by a thread. And the real-world collateral damage is already piling up as multinational corporations like Nvidia and Boeing face billions in lost revenue as a direct result of the trade war.

Even if the writing has been on the wall for years, breaking up is never easy. China and the US don’t often see eye to eye, but for decades, they have broadly agreed that it is better to be trade partners than trade enemies. That alliance is now hanging by a thread. And the real-world collateral damage is already piling up. The presidents of the world’s two biggest economies don’t appear ready to talk turkey. China indicated Wednesday that it would be open to negotiations only if talks are based on “respect,” and greater “consistency and reciprocity” from the Trump administration, a person familiar with the matter told my CNN colleagues. (I, for one, am not holding my breath.) Without some kind of retrenchment, US-China trade is expected to fall by more than 80% — a magnitude “tantamount to a decoupling,” said Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the director general of the World Trade Organization, which issued a similarly grim report on global trade Wednesday. (The upshot: Pre-Trump tariffs, global trade was penciled in to grow 2.7% this year. Now, it’s expected to shrink 0.2%.) Here’s how Trump’s trade war is already rippling through the economy: