The News
The US and China must quickly complete a trade deal or the global economy will face further disruption, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the US, said Thursday.
“[Getting a deal] is so fundamental to the future stability of the market,” Rudd told Amna Nawaz, co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour and a Semafor contributor.
“It is in our collective interest [for] this particular negotiation to get underway,” Rudd told the World Economy Summit in Washington, DC.
“The downstream consequences of any further bifurcation of the two economies — the supply chain impact will be enormous, the inflationary impact will be enormous, the disruption to the global economy will be enormous.”
US President Donald Trump has taken steps in recent days to lower tensions with China, signaling he is willing to reduce some import duties. China has long been a focus of Trump’s ire; the country runs a trade surplus with the US, and Trump has sought to increase domestic manufacturing to reduce that gap.
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Rudd said that Australia has the confidence to land its own trade deal with the US, but a stable US-China trade and economic relationship would help.
Both the US and China are important trade partners of Australia, Rudd, who previously served as Australia’s prime minister, added. He likened balancing relationships with the two superpowers to chewing gum and walking at the same time — the “eternal principle of Australian international relations theory.”
The Semafor View
European markets have suffered from a lack of competitiveness with the US and China, with just a handful of tech startups to come out of the continent. But countries everywhere are facing similar business challenges as they transition to cleaner energy and chase technological dominance.