Do you think the escalation in the U.S.-China trade dispute is a threat to world economic growth?

The delusional current occupant of the White House is, not only a threat to world economic growth, but the main threat to U.S. national security.

China ride it out, don't let the US use trade to threaten you, to dictate to you. Soon the Chinese economy will out strip that of the US. The US uses trade as a means to control the globe; it wants total military, political and economic nomination. Foreign economic aid is also used by the US to dominate the globe; do as we say, support US in UN resolutions or we will stop aid. Time all nations stood UP to US dictatorship, time all people of the world told their governments to get a backbone and stand up to the US.

The two biggest economies in the world are at odds with other. Everyone else will suffer.

The 2 petulant kids are having tantrums. Naps will calm them down.

China has an internal debt crisis coming (real estate, credit card-type, loans). How flexible and how competent is the regime to deal with that? Maybe can, maybe can't, maybe just here and there.

The US hs been like that for years but stil has mechanisms in place to deal with it.

'My tarif is bigger than your tarif' is hardly helpful, as market volatility shows, ignred at everone's peril. N fan of corproate capital laissez faire, but that is how it is. War, trade war - bad for business, bad for you.

While those two have a pissing fight, it would make sense that the rest of the world open up new trading channels and see what they can do to depend less on trade with either one. It's never a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket. Once those two realize that they are not the only ones to do business with, maybe logic and reason may prevail. Wishful thinking I know but stranger things have happened.

This will be a relatively short term transient event in the big (long term) picture. As Reckless pointed out several other southeast Asian countries see this as a potential gain (business have been and are accelerating their movement to Vietnam, etc). This may have geopolitical consequences as well as China has been trying to exert a great deal of influence over many southeast Asian countries. Although China, in spite of its disregard for human freedom and rights, is much better than the U.S. (far better than Trump and better than our past administrations) at working foreign policy in the best interest of China and I am sure China will keep focused on its long term goals while the U.S. policies wave in the wind and change as administrations change.

U.S. business sold out the American worker to China decades ago and the U.S. government was completely in bed with the business in doing so. I am no fan of Trump but I think he should hold the course on this one. This should have been dealt with before.

@KnowBetter: I agree with you that other countries should pursue other avenues and I think this is happening; albeit slowly.

Of course it's a threat to global economic growth in the short term. But not necessarily so in the long term.

RecklessMay 15  10:01 am JST Welcome to the new age of "made in India" coming soon...

As others have noted, if this tariff war continues for a couple years, then other Asian nations are sure to benefit at China's expense. I'm not sure about India, however. For all it's repressiveness, China has a better and, in some ways, better intended domestic political-economy than does India. China takes pride in having, numerically, the world's largest "middle-class." However, it's arguable that the level of corruption and the lack of social cohesion in what is putively a democratic nation is much worse in India than in China. China's major cities aren't surrounded by rings of dire poverty the way they are still in India. India's annual economic growth is, supposedly, still above 6%, but income levels remain where China was about 20 years ago.

China's economy is going to suffer more than the U.S.' economy from this trade dispute, and in the long term the U.S. will emerge from this in far better shape.

U.S.' economy from this trade dispute, and in the long term the U.S. will emerge from this in far better shape.

how wil it emerge in better shape , overall deficit is still rising , debt limits continually get hit and have to be raised. China may lose manufacturing to other countries like bangladesh, India, Indonesia, but already have many factories in those countries so while the US trade deficit may drop with China itll just grow with those countries that dont have tarriffs with the US , the overall trade deficit will probably still grow as all thats happening is reshuffling the cards. Manufacturing will never come back to the US in any meaningful way, there are at least a dozen low cost labor countries that take up the loss of Chinas manufacturing

The problem with this survey is that it's conflating three areas of the trade war into one:

1) Intellectual property theft by China

2) The Chinese government being directly integrated into companies that are trying to establish a foothold as the suppliers of infrastructure

3) Trade imbalance between China and Americ

The first one is a major issue that needs to be resolved. Fighting it will definitely cause short term pain, but not dealing with it will create even more pain in the future. The same can be said of the second.

As for the trade imbalance with America however, that was in America's benefit, not disadvantage. There will be not only short term pain on this, but long-term pain as well, that won't get better.

Unfortunately, Trump's supporters do not have the mental capacity to understand nuance, or ability to hold different opinions based on circumstance, so they will try to justify their support of #3 above, by the validity of #1 and #2. But neither of those make #3 valid.

I think the President needs to use better diplomacy.

America has a trade imbalance with virtually every country. This is what happens when you are the number one spender and you don’t really produce anything.

China is one of the biggest producers simply because American companies spearheaded the big move to China years ago in order to cut costs and take advantage of cheaper labor. Many new companies were born and many existing companies followed suit because of that.

A war between the biggest producer and the biggest spender would cause economic rifts everywhere. Simply because many countries and companies have multiple stakes in both countries and this harms those investments.