Two giants shaking the world | Topics of …

Production: Javier Lewkowicz

The origin of the conflict

By Esteban Actis *

Academics and badysts specializing in international relations seek to understand where the causes of the "trade war" between the United States and China lie. To enter this aspect is crucial both to understand a neuralgic dynamic of the current international order and to be able to project scenarios around the Sino-American conflict.

To advance this issue, it is necessary to eliminate the clbadical texts of our discipline. In 1954, Kenneth Waltz published his famous work "The Man, the State and the War" where he attempted to badyze the causes of war and peace among nations. In his opinion, the answers to the above question can be clbadified under the following headings: in the human; in the structure of States; within the interstate system. In this way, it is possible to identify the internal and external factors that condition the behavior of states and explain the reason for their actions at the international level. The weight of each of the explanatory variables of a state's external behavior depends on different factors and circumstances.

With regard to the trade dispute that the United States and China have been carrying out since last year, it can be said that in the nature of "men" there is an important cause. The personalities, beliefs and worldviews of Donal Trump and Xi-Jimping have played an important role in this year of commercial tension. Compared to their predecessors (Obama and Hu Jintao), the two leaders have a vision of zero-sum power, a very hard bargaining position and above all a negative perception of the role of the other in the international system.

On the other hand, we could also say that in every state there is very strong pressure to change a cooperative approach into a more confrontational approach in the bilateral link. The advance of a neoconservative branch in the United States that considers China as an "economic predator" and a "cultural threat" to the West, as well as the advance of the more branch nationalist Chinese Communist Party that is betting on greater economic self-sufficiency are indicators to take into account. For its part, the dispute between the US capital of the technology sector and Chinese companies (5G, artificial intelligence, quantum Internet, robotics, etc.) is also pushing for a tightening of the policy with regard to China. .

However, and without underestimating the relevant aspects, to understand the reason for the trade war between the powers, we must weigh, as Waltz pointed out, primarily the systemic variable, in relation to the changes in the international structure . For years, we have witnessed a relative change in the distribution of material power. China converges and narrows the gap with American economic power. As in other moments of history, when a rising power defies the primacy and hegemony of another, conflict becomes inevitable. The so-called "Thucydides trap", in connection with what the famous Greek thinker says, refers to the structural tension that occurs when a new power defies an established power. As Graham Allison of Harvard Kennedy School points out, overcoming the trap and not ending in a conflict of war requires tremendous and painful adjustments of attitudes and actions not only of the challenger, but also of the challenge. In this sense, it is necessary, in the very nature of the system, to search for the causes of the current trade war, which are at the forefront of the iceberg of deep tensions and misunderstandings in a bilateral relationship characterized by an interdependence of over 30 years old. On the verge of entering the third decade of the 21st century, this interdependence, which was asymmetrical in favor of Washington, has become increasingly symmetrical, hence its deep malaise.

In short, in addition to observing the behavior of leaders and see what happens inside the borders of the United States and China, it is imperative to visualize deeper changes in the heart of the international system in order to fully understand the trade hostilities between the Powers. Beyond all that has been said, there is no doubt that the co-evolution of the relationship between the United States and China is the new axis of international relations.

Doctor in International Relations. Professor and researcher of the UNR.

Pandora's box

By Martín Burgos **

During the 2008 economic crisis, it was common to hear that relations between China and the United States were one of the economic partners in which the latter consumed what they produced and financed by the United States. purchase of treasury bills. Ten years later, the tension between the two countries is such that no one really knows where the dispute can go.

The general context in which the economic conflict occurs is a process we might call "partial deglobalization," in which protectionism is spread around the world, but mainly driven by the United States, while finance continues to maintain structure. they were deregulated until the crisis of Lehman Brothers, and even the so-called "parallel banking system" has proliferated ever since.

When Trump was elected in 2016, few people thought his reindustrialization speech was going to be put into practice so vigorously. After tearing down or reconfiguring several free trade agreements and leaving the agony of the World Trade Organization, the staunch protectionism against China has sparked a series of commercial reprisals against the country. 39, a magnitude unknown until then. These disputes quickly turned into policies aimed at curbing China's technological progress, which was already becoming a primary military geopolitical problem, especially in the case of Huawei.

Exhausted by the trade war, we reached a stage of monetary war in which the competitive devaluation of the yuan could no longer be followed by the same policy by the United States, despite Trump's speeches against the Fed. The move by China is important because the dispute is no longer limited to industrial production, China's strong point, but can begin to take shape in the field of money and finance, the strong point of the United States .

Once the Pandora Box is opened, it will be impossible to know whether China will continue on this path and start installing its currency as a competitor of the United States in world trade, or whether the multilateral financial institutions it tries to install are the beginning. alternatives to the Bretton Woods institutions dominated by Western countries. But it is essential to understand that the global economic axis is moving more and more from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

For a country like Argentina, this situation of trade and monetary dispute is already of great relevance. In the first place because it is one of 3 soybean exporters in China with the United States and Brazil, the only food product of which China is heavily dependent on imports. And because their reserves are also made up of nearly 20% Chinese yuan through the exchange, which is why the Chinese devaluation has resulted in a reduction of reserves of $ 500 million.

As far as soy is concerned, it is clear from what has happened so far that there are two opposite movements in international prices: on the one hand, the displacement of United as a Chinese supplier allows an increase in Argentine deliveries to Shanghai. On the other hand, the US soybean surplus is turning to the rest of the world market, implicating Argentine markets.

It follows from all the foregoing that it is impossible to consider the relationship between Argentina and China as a purely bilateral relationship, since the United States is present in every link in the soya chain: machinery and equipment. inputs used by businesses. oil companies and traders, Chicago market pricing and importers, who in many cases are the same as exporters. Therefore, it is necessary to begin to examine relations between China, Argentina and the United States in a triangular pattern, as was the case in the 20s and 30s with relations between Argentina, the Great Britain and the United States.

** Coordinator of the Department of Political Economy of the CCC.