What the next phase of Trump’s trade war with China looks like

For clues as to where US policy towards Beijing goes next, look beyond Donald Trump’s chaotic and erratic tariffs and focus instead on the small print of the US-UK draft trade deal. It has a clear message: that if you want to do business with Washington, keep China at bay.

The agreement itself doesn’t quite put it that way. It doesn’t need to. Instead, there are broad pledges to cooperate and coordinate on ‘the effective use of investment and security measures, export controls, and ICT [information and communications technology] vendor security’, and ‘to address non-market policies of third countries’ – all tailor-made for China, even if the country is not mentioned by name. It is even more significant because the UK agreement is being touted as a template for those the US is seeking to strike with others.

That explains why Beijing is so rattled, its foreign ministry telling the Financial Times it was a ‘basic principle’ that agreements between countries should not target other nations, and that ‘co-operation between states should not be conducted against or to the detriment of the interests of third parties’.