China’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Li Chenggang, told a closed-door meeting in Geneva on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s “tariff shocks” could trigger a worldwide recession.
“These ‘tariff shocks’ heighten economic uncertainty, disrupt global trade, and risk domestic inflation, market distortion or even global recession. Worse, the U.S. unilateralism threatens to upend the rules-based multilateral trading system,” Li said.
The WTO, headquartered in Geneva, is governed by a “General Council” that meets regularly with trade ambassadors from all 166 nations. Tuesday’s meeting was the first time since the 2024 U.S. election that growing worldwide trade frictions have been formally addressed by the General Council.
Several delegates told Reuters on Tuesday that the current WTO meeting was not expected to resolve any of the big global trade issues, but China is evidently using it as an opportunity to rally support against President Donald Trump’s tariff threats:
Less than being a swipe at Washington, some delegates said they considered China’s call for debate more as an effort to show itself as compliant with WTO rules – a posture that can help China win allies in ongoing global trade negotiations.
“They want to look reasonable and responsible and like the best student in the class,” said one delegate who was not authorised to speak publicly.
Disputes between the two top economies at the WTO long predate Trump’s arrival. Beijing has accused Washington of breaking rules while Washington says Beijing does not deserve its “developing country” status which entitles it to special treatment under WTO rules.
This last was an allusion to China absurdly classifying itself as a “developing nation” to enjoy preferential treatment at the WTO, despite being one of the world’s largest economies.
U.S. envoy David Bisbee responded to Beijing’s criticism in Geneva by denouncing China as a “predatory non-market economic system.”
“It is now more than two decades since China joined the WTO, and it is clear that China has not lived up to the bargain that it struck with WTO Members when it acceded. During this period, China has produced a long record of violating, disregarding, and evading WTO rules,” Bisbee said.
China’s tendency to play by different rules than it demands for other nations is one reason President Trump imposed ten percent tariffs, and a host of significant trade restrictions, on Chinese imports in early February.
Trump has long been skeptical of the WTO, and he has not hesitated to withdraw from international organizations where he believes the United States has been treated unfairly, so WTO criticism of the second Trump administration has been muted to avoid provoking the U.S. to leave the WTO.
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) nominee Jamieson Greer, who was approved by the Senate Finance Committee last week, has urged other countries to lower their import barriers if they wish to avoid tariffs and “enjoy continued market access to the United States.”
During his Senate confirmation hearings, Greer described America’s trade deficits as a “growing problem” – particularly with China, which he criticized for reneging on important terms of its trade deal with the first Trump administration. Greer was chief of staff to Trump’s first USTR, Robert Lighthizer.
In written testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee last April, Greer described the WTO as a poor mechanism for dealing with Chinese “mercantilism,” noting that America’s results from even the clearest victories in the WTO dispute settlement process have usually been unsatisfactory.
“The Chinese are not terribly worried about complying with WTO requirements,” he observed. “It is unrealistic to think that on issues of even more fundamental concern, the Chinese will decide that this is the time for them to completely alter the basic structure of their economy.”
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