Trump will realize folly after tasting bitter fruit of the seed he has sown

In recent years, some observers have been hyping up the possibility of a head-on confrontation between China and the United States. With the shadow of a trade war growing darker and the tensions between the two countries in the South China Sea escalating, these observers believe their prediction is about to come true.

After Donald Trump won the US presidential election in 2016, a trade war between the world's largest and second-largest economies seemed likely. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has been brazenly pushing ahead his "America First" policy, by finding faults with almost all bilateral and multilateral trade deals that previous US administrations entered into, and ultimately pulling out of them.

On April 5, the Trump administration threatened to slap tariffs on $100 billion worth of Chinese imports. The move came just days after the US Trade Representative proposed to levy additional 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods.

In response to the US move, China was forced to adopt countermeasures. But considering the interdependence of the two economies and their significance to global trade, if a full-fledged trade war does break out, neither side will emerge a winner.

Admittedly, Beijing and Washington have tried to avoid s