US-China spat presents little opportunity for India, will aggravate the economic slowdown | The Indian Express

US-China spat presents little opportunity for India, will aggravate the economic slowdown | The Indian Express

Written by Bhaskar Chakravorti |Updated: May 23, 2019 6:20:39 am

The writer is Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, founding executive director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context. He is author of The Slow Pace of Fast Change

US-China spat presents little opportunity for India, will aggravate the economic slowdown

When the warring parties are the world’s two biggest, and entangled, economies, everyone gets hurt — even in countries such as India, supposedly sitting on the sidelines.

Donald Trump rides into office with many promises, one of them being standing up to the Chinese for currency manipulation, unfair trade practices, intellectual property theft and taking away American jobs. (Reuters)

“China should not retaliate — will only get worse.” That was just another late evening tweetstorm from the White House. China will turn “peril into opportunity,” retorted China Central Television, reminding the people engaged in this “people’s war” that as a nation that has “experienced 5 years of wind and rain,” it was ready for pretty much anything. The US-China trade war has not only added tariffs and jitters but is headed towards a tweet-for-tat escalation with no clear end.