Trump’s unrelenting global trade wars have sealed our fate – we’re in for an economically depressed decade

Like the 1930s, the 2020s are shaping up to be a difficult decade. Now, as then, a financial crisis had been followed by a retreat to economic nationalism and populism

I keep a 1 yuan coin on my keyboard. It reminds me about what matters in life. This is in the same way as some people keep photographs of their family on their desk, or an image of their Alfa convertible as a screensaver, or carry a locket of Boris Johnson’s flaxen hair around their neck.

Anyway, my yuan is worth 12 pence, or, more to the point, just over 14 cents (US). Thus, an American dollar will buy seven of these yuan, or renminbi (the formal term meaning “people’s currency”, of course). The exchange rate has just, as the saying goes, “cracked seven” (or “po qi”, as they say in China). A year ago, a dollar would buy 6.85 renminbi, and five years ago 6.15. So it is not a seismic shift, but it is a psychologically and symbolically significant moment. The Chinese have devalued their currency to offset Donald Trump’s tariffs, and no doubt he will simply add more tariffs in a tit-for-tat retaliation. Such are the escalating dynamics of the US-China trade war.

It doesn’t stop there. The White House, generally, has begun to create “linkage” between the two powers’ economic relationship and their equally strained geopolitical one. These points of contention cover everything from American unease about the Belt and Road Initiative (with its overtones of neo-colonialism from Sri Lanka to Djibouti to Italy, Taiwan, various sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea and, potentially, over Hong Kong). Washington and Beijing don’t have to look far for things to row about.