Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Jason Miks.

April 4, 2018

China Sharpens Its Knife

The tit-for-tat announcements from the US and China on tariffs sent markets on another roller coaster ride Wednesday over fears of a trade war. But the moves also revealed something else: One side is willing to punch hard where it hurts most. And it's not Team Trump, writes Christopher Balding for Bloomberg View.

"Trump's [tariffs] list was notable for how hard it worked to minimize the pain felt by American consumers and Chinese businesses. It avoided disrupting major sectors, and seemed to focus on products that could easily be substituted," Balding says.

"By contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration produced a heavily concentrated list that targeted politically sensitive industries such as planes, beef and soybeans. Covering only a little more than 100 products, but worth about the same as the US list, these tariffs seemed designed to place severe pressure on key companies and constituencies."

"Trump clearly hopes to pressure Beijing to open up its markets while minimizing disruptions for Americans. In fact, he seems to be trying to reach a quick negotiated settlement, as the tariffs won't take effect for at least 60 days. Xi's list is meant to cause concentrated political and financial pain. In other words, while the US tried to soften the blow, China sharpened the knife."

Talking tough. China's state-backed Global Times struck a hawkish note in an editorial following the US tariffs announcement. The message? We don't need you as much as you think.

"Some US elites stubbornly believe that the Chinese economy's dependence on the US market is much higher than the US economy's dependence on the Chinese market. They are pushing Washington to change its trade policy with China based on their vague understanding. But the truth is that the total size of China's consumer market has already surpassed the US. The logic that China is more dependent on the US is untenable."

Why this could be uglier than before. The growing trade war fears raise an obvious question: If Washington and Beijing get into a full-blown trade war, how do they get out? The answer isn't as clear as it used to be, argues Rick Noack in the Washington Post. Thank, in part, Team Trump's attacks on the very organization that would usually be expected to calm things down.

"In the past, most ordinary trade disputes have been solved through the WTO's dispute settlement process, which relies on member states to refer their cases to the organization to work out a solution. In other words: Rather than itself filing complaints against nations, the WTO mostly acts as a voluntary mediator or platform for adjudication panels if members decide to press demands," Noack writes.

"But while China has used the WTO to accuse the United States of unfairly imposing trade restrictions over the last months, Trump does not appear interested in being dragged into the dispute settlement process. In fact, Trump appears to be deliberately undermining the legitimacy of that process by saying that his tariffs plan was based on 'national security' concerns."

McMaster's Parting Slap

Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster didn't explicitly criticize President Trump during a farewell speech that took a tough line on Russia. But he aimed a clear rhetorical slap at an administration that has done too little to counter the Moscow threat, Jennifer Rubin argues in the Washington Post. His successor should take notes.

"McMaster certainly understands that our responses have not been proportionate to Russian aggression and that we cannot merely 'get along' with a hostile power that is engaged in multifaceted warfare against the United States. Unlike Trump…McMaster described the magnitude of the challenge and the resources we need to draw upon to maintain our freedoms from newly aggressive, autocratic regimes," Rubin argues.

"His successor, John Bolton, would be well advised to study the speech. Bolton will no longer be a TV pundit free to bandy about military threats and ignore human rights as an integral part of US foreign policy. Empty threats have no place in the Situation Room."

McMaster singled out "four critical areas" the US needs to do better on in responding to and deterring Russian aggression.

Per The Atlantic Council's Ashish Kumar Sen: "These four areas, [McMaster] said, are: counter Russian cyber warfare by integrating military, political, and informational instruments of power; invest in cyber infrastructure; share burden of defense, which means all NATO nations must honor the target of spending 2 percent of the GDP on defense; and realize that 'all of our actions depend on preserving our strategic confidence.' In an earlier panel discussion, the leaders of the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—said that they would like a 'long-standing' US troop presence in their region to help them stand up to the threat posed by a revanchist Russia."

Why Trump Should Can the Mexico Tweetstorms

President Trump's tweetstorms on Mexico – and now a pledge to deploy the National Guard to the US-Mexico border until the border wall is complete – are likely to prove counterproductive, argue Desmond Lachman and Ryan Nabil for The Hill. The attacks are a boon to politicians vowing to stand up to the United States. And leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador is already cashing in.

"Lopez Obrador is running his campaign on a nationalist platform that is highly critical of the current government's handling of US-Mexican relations in general and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations in particular," they write.

"The last thing that Mexico now needs is increased doubts about NAFTA, which is of critical importance to the country's economy.

"This is not simply because exports are the lifeblood of the Mexican economy, accounting for more than one-third of GDP. It is also because the US is by far Mexico's largest trade partner, accounting for around three-quarters of Mexico's export market.

"A weakened Mexican economy would not be in the US interest, especially at a time that the threat of a world trade war is already undermining global economic confidence."

The Nuclear Game of Chicken No One Seems to Be Watching

While the world has been focused on the saber-rattling – then thaw – of US-North Korea tensions, another nuclear threat has been building in Asia, Tom Hundley writes for Vox. India and Pakistan are working on arming submarines with nuclear weapons – and considering their history, that could be disastrous.

The two nations have "for the past two decades…been locked in a frightening nuclear arms race on land. Pushing the contest into the Indian Ocean makes the situation even more dangerous by loosening the chain of command and control over the weapons, increasing the number of weapons, and placing them in an environment where things tend to go wrong," Hundley says.

"This should be setting off alarms throughout the international community. Growing numbers of nuclear weapons will soon be deployed to submarines patrolling some of the most bitterly contested waters on earth — and controlled by jittery and potentially paranoid officers on perpetual high alert about a surprise attack from the other side.

"The result is a game of nuclear chicken every bit as dangerous as the 'my button is bigger than yours' competition between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un on the Korean Peninsula. The difference here is that this one is going almost completely unnoticed."

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