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US-China trade war
OpinionWorld Opinion
Zhou Xiaoming
Opinion
Zhou Xiaoming

Reciprocal tariffs are nothing short of an attack on world trade

Trump’s tariff agenda undermines the trading norms the US helped set up and could force others to follow suit or suffer the consequences

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Employees produce clothing for export to Europe and the US, in Suqian, Jiangsu province, on January 23. Photo: AFP
Zhou Xiaoming
Zhou Xiaoming is a senior fellow at the Centre for China and Globalisation in Beijing and a former deputy representative of China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva.
US President Donald Trump described his reciprocal tariffs as the “big one”. Although he habitually exaggerates his claims, the world could hardly afford to take this one lightly. His tariff policy agenda, which calls for imposing the same tariffs on other countries that they impose on the US, undermines the fundamental principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO), thus posing an existential threat to the multilateral trading system.

The WTO’s most-favoured nation principle requires that its members treat others equally. WTO members are not supposed to discriminate between their trading partners. So when a WTO member lowers or raises a product’s import duty for any member, it must do the same for all other members. Other than some exceptions, such as arrangements for free trade blocs, a WTO member should apply the same tariff rate for all members for the same product despite facing different rates from other members for its own goods.

Given the different tariff rates WTO members apply, Trump’s reciprocal tariff policy will inevitably result in various rates for different members. Consequently, some members will be discriminated against by paying a higher duty than others when exporting to the US.

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