A trade war based on US ignorance

Like slowly moving tectonic plates, in which at first there is no perceptible movement, only to be followed later by a jarring earthquake, the ground is finally shifting in the trade war between the United States and China.

This trade war is not just about trade, which would be easy to fix, but about the geopolitical and economic rise of China. The Chinese offer to purchase more US agricultural products was an example of how progress could have been made in resolving a pure trade deficit issue, if that was the case.

The US, under the present leadership team, feels threatened by the ever-evolving position of China and especially the stellar rise in Chinese self-sufficiency with regard to new technologies, the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. It was all fine when China was "the factory of the world", producing goods also for US companies and benefiting millions of US citizens with low-cost consumer goods, but the Chinese high-tech planning has really caught the attention of the White House. The plan seems to have riled the US administration because it aims to integrate the latest technologies to create a much more efficient industrial base, and most notably the aim to become less dependent on foreign technology.