President Obama announced a 35% tariff on automobile and light-truck tires imported from China in September, 2009. This decision is based on a proposal by United Steelworkers. The union said American producers have suffered a "market disruption" in imports from China. The International Trade Commission agreed with the union and recommended the president to impose the tariffs. As a result, the China's Ministry of Commerce announced anti-dumping tariffs up to 105.4% against U.S chicken feet imports in February,2010.
The tariff problems mentioned above are just two of the large amounts of the U.S-China trade conflicts. Personally, I prefer "trade conflict" rather than "trade war", because I think it is quite normal that there are some issues between the world's largest two economic superpowers. The Comparative Advantage Theory tells us that each country has different comparative advantages. The United States is the leader of the high-technique industries and China is the coming largest industrial product producer. It is unfair to say that the mass trade deflect for America is all caused by the Chinese. Look at the back of your iPhone, it says"Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China". It gives us a clear view that it is the U.S which is always creative and leading to world. The United States and China are actually working with each other nowadays.
So how could I say about the Chinese tire and American chicken feet issues? The U.S government imposed the tire tariff because of the interests of the tire product unions'. Then the American chicken farmers paid the price for them somehow. It is a common sense that we can not get something for nothing. So I believe that both the American and Chinese government should think twice about the tariff policies. No winners in trade "wars".
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