From Mao and Nixon to Xi and Trump: A history of China-US trade
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What historical events set the stage for US‑China trade relations?
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Hello and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Bain. Today, as President Xi gets set this week to head to Washington DC for talks with President Trump, we're going to chart the history of US-China economic relations from opium bans to joining the World Trade Organisation. Yes, we will chart. The sometimes rocky journey between what are now the world's two largest economies and how what's gone before perhaps informs what might go on this week. That's coming up on Business Daily, exploring how work and money impact people around the world.
President Nixon's departure for China. South Lawn. 17 February 1972.
President Nixon prepares to leave Washington for China for what he would call... This was the week that changed the world. ...as President Xi prepares to fly in the opposite direction for an expected meeting with President Trump in Washington this week. What's happened in the intervening period in the trade relationship between China and the United States?
They've really taken advantage of our country for a long period of time.
We're faced
with opportunities
never seen before. We both understand that the capabilities and requirements of our two countries complement each other.
The American people are a great people. The Chinese people are a great people.
We have great differences today. What brings us together is that we have common interests. which transcend those differences.
The modern trading relationship between the US and China starts around that moment in 1969. And that's where most of our focus will be. But it's not the complete story. So let's go back, way back, 1784 back. the Empress of China became the first ship to carry goods across the Pacific Ocean directly between the US and China. It was just a year before that trade between the two countries had been allowed under the Treaty of Paris. Tea, silk and porcelain would be sent from China... Going the other way were things like silver, sandalwood and furs. The first really big trade dispute, well, you would have heard of the rouse recently over the importation of the illegal drug fentanyl into the United States.
Well, back then, the Chinese were upset about the amount of opium being sent from foreign countries, primarily Britain, but the US had also got in on the act. It led to the first treaty on trade between the countries in 1844. And tariffs... well, they're not a new issue either. At the time of the American Civil War, the US government needed to raise money. How to do it? Yep, sorry President Trump, but the word tariffs was also a favourite of those politicians back then, with import taxes of 50% in some cases. After the Second World War came the founding of the People's Republic of China, and trade, well, it almost ceased until 1969, and President Nixon and that inaugural address.
During this administration, our lines of communication will be open. We seek an open world, open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people.
Well, joining us is Chad P. Bowne. He's co-author of the book How to Win a Trade War and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C. He also served in two different Democrat White House administrations.
At that stage, China was really so underdeveloped that there was really very little technologically available. that China could do with the exception of really labor-intensive manufacturing. And during that era, and so we're talking about footwear and clothing and textile, sewing,
things of that nature. In 1972, President Nixon arrived in China to meet with Chairman Mao and his premier, Zhao Enlai.
I don't want to normalize the relationship between the two. The peoples of our two countries have always been friendly to each other. But owing to reasons known to all, contacts between the two peoples were suspended for over 20 years.
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