At the 2018 annual meeting of the China Development High-Level Forum, the attending Chinese and foreign guests paid close attention to the huge negative impact of the United States’ recent announcement of the 301 investigation report. Some foreign representatives believe that 'to bow down to protectionism will cause everyone to suffer' The US trade protection act not only violates the rules of international trade and damages others, it may even ruin the hard-won recovery in the world economy.
After the United States proposed to adopt trade protection measures on the 22nd, it immediately took a huge hit and hit the global stock market. The three major U.S. stock indexes fell more than 2.4%, the Nikkei 225 fell 4.51% and the Frankfurt, Germany stock market fell 1.63% on the 23rd. The U.S. announced that it would levy tariffs of 25% and 10% on imports of steel and aluminum products. The U.S. trade protection policy has already caused opposition from various parties. The fierce reaction of the market to the 301 investigation report has clearly shown us that we have been obstinate. What trade protection measures will bring to the world economy.
World Trade Organization Director General Azevedo said on the 23rd that taking unilateral actions outside the common framework of the World Trade Organization will only greatly increase the risk of escalation of conflicts, and such conflicts will not only fail to generate winners, but also quickly shake trade. System stability. 'At present, although the global economic recovery is fragile but the trend is obvious, setting up barriers to trade flows will damage the global economy.'
The U.S. trade protection measures are essentially the wanton destruction of the multilateral trade system represented by the WTO, and the consequences are very serious. The people of insight on the international front clearly expounded on the inherent logic of this kind of damage. At the China Development Forum 2018 At the conference, Susan Schwab, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland and former U.S. trade representative, pointed out that the government's trade-restricting interventions will damage the evolution of global value chains. The United Nations and the World Trade Organization’s joint agency, the International Trade Center, implemented Director González also stated recently that trade protection measures have deprived enterprises of optimizing their capital allocation and the freedom to purchase the best quality and cheapest products and services. Ultimately, consumers will bear higher prices and their competitiveness will decline.
At the end of last year, the United Nations released the "World Economic Situation and Prospects for 2018" report, which predicted that global economic growth will be stronger, and economic growth in 2018 and 2019 is expected to stabilize at about 3%. But at the same time, the report also emphasized the global The economy is still at risk. The first one is 'change in trade policy'. History has proved that trade is an important engine of economic growth, WTO rules are an important institutional guarantee for economic globalization, and the multilateral trading system is an important guarantee for prosperity and development. In line with the common interests of all countries. If the multilateral trading system cannot be effectively maintained, multilateral rules cannot be strictly observed, and the prosperity and development of the global economy will be difficult to sustain.