10.6092/issn.2531-6133/18311
application/pdf
2531-6133
18311
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en
Raj Bhala
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University of Bologna Law Review
Origins of the Sino-American Trade War:  A Case Study of Three Shakespearean Proverbs on Expectations
Text.Serial.Journal
https://bolognalawreview.unibo.it/
8
Obiter Dictum
2023-11-02
2023-10-23
2023-11-02
2023-12-07
1-10
UBLR
Raj Bhala
2023/11/02
10.6092/issn.2531-6133/18311
1
University of Kansas
2531-6133
2
en
10
Origins of the Sino-American Trade War:  A Case Study of Three Shakespearean Proverbs on Expectations
https://bolognalawreview.unibo.it/article/download/18311/16942
8
llVOLUME 8                                    llISSUE 2                            OBITER DICTUM



                           UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA LAW REVIEW
                           https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2531‐6133/18311



    Origins of the Sino‐American Trade War: A Case Study of
         Three Shakespearean Proverbs on Expectations

                                        EDITORIAL NOTE
                    This Obiter Dictum was subject to a single-blind peer review,
                      in which the anonymity of the reviewer was guaranteed.


There is much to say about the trade war between America and China. So much to say
that it is an honour to have authored Trade War: Causes, Conduct, and Consequences of
Sino-American Confrontation, a 710-page analysis, published contemporaneously with this
Obiter Dictum.1 The thesis of that book is straightforward: America and China are locked
in a trade war to which there is no obvious end in sight. The causes of which lie in their
different values; the conduct of which extends far beyond commerce; and the
consequences of which are dangerous. The thesis of this essay complements the thesis of
that book and, in a sense, lines up chronologically before it. Here, the question addressed
is what are the origins of the Trade War?                   Succinctly put, the answer – the
complementary thesis – is disappointed expectations. In other words, the origins of the
Trade War date back nearly 75 years to the expectations surrounding China’s effort to
enter (or re-enter – given its ancient history) the world trade system. Those expectations
were inflated, even unrealistic. They remain unfulfilled. Hence, unsurprisingly, in
retrospect, disappointed expectations led to an outright, across-the-board commercial
conflict between the Eagle and the Dragon. Three of Shakespeare’s proverbs (quoted
below) aptly summarise this expectations narrative.
         The starting point for this expectations narrative is 30 October 1947. That was
the birthdate of the modern multilateral trade system through the signing of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).2




1
  See BHALA, CAUSES, CONDUCT AND CONSEQUENCES OF SINO-AMERICAN CONFRONTATION (2023), https://cap-
  press.com/books/isbn/9781531027438/Trade-War.
2
  See 1 Raj Bhala, Modern GATT Law: A Treatise on the Law and Political Economy of the General Agreement
  on Tariffs and Trade and Other World Trade Organization Agreements, ch. 1 (Thomson Sweet & Maxwell
  eds., 2nd edition, 2013), www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/Catalogue/ProductDetails.aspx?recordid=5273.



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GATT, which entered into force on 1 January 1948, was both the institutional architecture
and constitutional treaty for world trade until 1 January 1995 when the World Trade
Organization (WTO) was born. China, along with the United States, as well as India and
Pakistan, was one of the 23 original GATT contracting parties. But which “China” was
that signatory?
         It was the “China” governed by the Nationalists under the Kuomintang (KMT) under
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek (1887-1975).3 The KMT lost the 1927-1949 Chinese Civil
War and fled to the then island of Formosa – now known as Taiwan.4 On 1 October 1949,
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), hoisted
the Red Flag over Tiananmen Square.5 A year later, in October 1950, a mysterious telex
was sent from Taiwan to the GATT Secretariat – the headquarters of GATT – in Geneva.
The telex said “China” was withdrawing from GATT.6
         Mao’s government, in control of Mainland China, but not Taiwan, did not pay
much attention to the withdrawal that purported to cover both the Mainland and
Taiwan. The CCP had little interest in being part of what would quickly evolve into a
post-Second World War, Cold War, capitalist trading system. Moreover, as famed Mao
biographer Ross Terrill (1938-) writes of the Chairman:

           [. . .] Ambivalence marked his [Mao’s] view of America. [. . .]
           The root of Mao’s ambivalence lay in the mixed feelings he had had
           toward the West as a young man. The U.S. was both capitalist and
           non-Chinese. It was hard for Mao to bring himself to rely on such a
           force. The U.S. was advanced, yes, but maybe also sated by its wealth
           and comforts, maybe doomed by Marx’s “laws” to fall even quicker
           than it had risen.7

The KMT worried that if its “China” remained in GATT, then – per GATT Article I:1 –
industries on the Mainland would receive the most favoured nation (MFN) treatment
from all other contracting parties.8 At the time, Taiwan was relatively less industrialised.
3
  See John King Fairbank, The United States and China, Chapters 9-11 (Harvard University Press ed., 4th
  edition, 1983) [Hereinafter, Fairbank].
4
  See e.g., Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (The Macmillan
  Company ed., 1971), for a classic account of how the American war effort on behalf of the Nationalists was
  wasted; Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (Victor Gollancz ed., 1st revised and enlarged edition, 1968), for
  a classic, first-hand account of the Chinese Civil War by the first Westerner to meet and interview Chinese
  Communist officials.
5
  Fairbank, supra note 3, ch. 13-14.
6
  See 1 Raj Bhala, International Trade Law: A Comprehensive Textbook, ch. 19, 423 n.2 (5th edition, 2019),
  https://cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781531014711/International-Trade-Law-A-Comprehensive-Textbook-
  Four-Volume-Set-Fifth-Edition, [Hereinafter, Bhala, Trade Textbook].
7
  Ross Terrill, Mao: A Biography 396 (Stanford University Press ed., revised and expanded edition, 1999).
8
  On the MFN rule, see 1 Bhala, supra note 6, ch. 28.


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Hence, the KMT essentially sought what might be called infant industry protection and
import substitution by keeping “China” out of GATT.9
          Accordingly, China, as in Mainland China, was out, and so was Taiwan. This
would remain true until 11 December 2001,10 when China joined the WTO, as did Taiwan
one month later on 11 January 2002.11 History, of course, is replete with ironies. In
retrospect, Taiwan would have benefitted from the non-discrimination and market
access rules of GATT as it raced far ahead of the Mainland to industrialise in the decades
immediately following the War. It became an export powerhouse – one of the East Asian
Four Tigers (along with Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore).12 Mainland Chinese trade
policy was, after 1950 until the late 1970s, autarky, i.e., no trade.13 To be sure, the
Mainland did engage in imports and exports, but not with the U.S. or most other
countries in the Western Alliance, nor with India (with which it fought a border war in
1962).14 Rather, the Mainland sought to be self-reliant, and its interest in trade, if any,
was confined to other Socialist or Communist Countries, like North Korea after the
1950-53 Korean War, and the former Soviet Union until the Sino-Soviet split in 1961.
Amidst is self-imposed isolation and inward-looking economic policies, China from 1966
to 1976 underwent a Cultural Revolution. Its hideous consequences – including for
human rights – taught some senior CCP leaders that they needed to reconsider their
relationship with the world trading system. Even Chairman Mao, who died in 1976,
agreed to the February 1972 Shanghai Communiqué with U.S. President Richard Nixon
(1913-1994) and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger (1923-).
          The tide against international trade turned for China Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997)
– China’s pragmatic top leader from December 1978 to November 1989. Famous for
catchy progressive phrases like, “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it
catches mice”; “Reform is China’s second revolution”; and “To get rich is glorious”,15 he
catalysed a serious of market-oriented changes to the Mainland’s sclerotically

9
   On modern Taiwanese economic history, see Peter C. Chow, Taiwan in the Global Economy: From an Agrarian
   Economy to an Exporter of High-Tech Products (Praeger Publishing ed., 2002).
10
   See World Trade Organization, China and the WTO, https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/china_
   _e.htm.
11
   See World Trade Organization, Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (Chinese Taipei)
   and the WTO, https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/chinese_taipei_e.htm.
12
   See The World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (Oxford University Press
   ed., 1993).
13
   For this and other points about the modern political economy of China, see Fairbank, supra note 3, ch. 15-17;
   see also Dwight H. Perkins, China’s Modern Economy in Historical Perspective (Stanford University Press ed.,
   1st ed., 1975).
14
   On the Sino-Indian War, see Bruce Riedel, JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, The CIA, and the Sino-Indian War
   (Brookings Institution Press ed., 2015); Jasjit Singh ed., China’s India War, 1962: Looking Back to See the
   Future (KW Publishers Pvt Ltd ed., 2013).
15
   Deng Xiaoping Quotes, BRAINYQUOTE, https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/deng-xiaoping-quotes.


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underperforming economy. Most notably among them, the creation of Special Economic
Zones (SEZs), in which limited private enterprise, was permitted.
           By 1986, China applied to join, or re-join, GATT, as a contracting party.16 That
was an inauspicious year, in that the GATT contracting parties – by then numbering
around 100 – had launched the biggest round of multilateral trade talks ever: the
Uruguay Round. The Uruguay Round, between 1986 and 1994, produced roughly 20 trade
treaties spanning about 1,000 pages, including the Agreement Establishing the WTO.17
Throughout the Uruguay Round, negotiators in the U.S., EU, and most other contracting
parties knew China was on the verge of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse – the
world’s factory.           That anticipated new status would be a blessing to their
producer-exporters, which would set up factories in China and ship goods with the
benefit of MFN treatment from the importing WTO Members. That status also was a
curse, specifically on domestic producers in other WTO Members. They might – and,
indeed, did (to one degree or another – depending on their market position,
management, and ability to adjust to technological change) – suffer from competition on
like or directly competitive merchandise made in China by low-cost labour that was
neither represented by independent trade unions nor protected by rigorous
environment regulations to guard against toxins of all sorts.
           So, the plot, as it were, was to finish the Uruguay Round texts first while
negotiating with China to join the “Club” but not invite China into the Club until the
texts were set. China then would have to accept the rules the existing Club members
wrote. That plot unfolded. The Uruguay Round negotiations were concluded on 15
December 1993, were signed in Marrakesh on 15 August 1994, and entered into force on 1
January 1995 (save for the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPs), which took effect on 1 January 1996). China’s application to accede to the WTO
was not finalised until nearly 13 years after it was first launched, in November 1999,
when China and the U.S. reached a key agreement on China’s commercial terms of
entry.18
           Those terms of entry, finalised by the Administration of President Bill Clinton
(1993-2001) and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji (1928-, Premier, 1998-2003), were
breath-taking.19 What made them so impressive was their breadth and depth: they spoke

16
   See Raj Bhala, Enter the Dragon: An Essay on China’s WTO Accession Saga, 15 American University International
   Law Review 1469-1538 (2000) [Hereinafter, Bhala, Enter the Dragon].
17
   See 1 Bhala, supra note 6, ch. 20 § I-II.
18
   See U.S.-China Bilateral WTO Agreement, Nov. 15, 1999, https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/
   WTO-Conf-1999/factsheets/fs-004.html.
19
   Bhala, Enter the Dragon: An Essay on China’s WTO Accession Saga, 15 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL LAW
   REVIEW 1469-1538 (2000).


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llVOLUME 8                                       llISSUE 2                               OBITER DICTUM



to the CCP’s intention to open its economy to foreign goods and services and Foreign
Direct Investment (FDI); protect intellectual property rights (IPRs); and subject itself to
the WTO dispute settlement system. As in just one example, China committed to slash its
auto tariffs from 100 per cent to 25 per cent (by 1 July 2006), and permit non-bank,
foreign, auto financers to lend to Chinese customers so they could afford to buy foreign
cars.20      Premier Zhu said the Chinese people could (to paraphrase the Chinese
expression) “eat bitterness” and suffer competition from overseas. Their culture of hard
work and entrepreneurship would help them succeed in the new, post-Cold War trading
system China was joining. Integration into this system would help further alleviate
poverty in China, and create job opportunities in export industries for millions of
Chinese citizens. Besides, China could not afford to stay out of this system if it was to
re-emerge on the world stage as a great power.
          To be sure, China never committed to becoming a western-style, multi-candidate,
multi-party democracy with an American-style Bill of Rights. The CCP never pledged that
it would let the KMT contest elections against itself on the Mainland; invite the 14th Dalai
Lama back to Tibet (whence he had fled to India in March 1959 amidst the Tibet Uprising);
nor that it would launch a transparent inquiry into the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square
massacre. Nor did the CCP need to do so. There never were any political or civil rights
criteria necessary to join GATT as a contracting party, and nor were there any to join the
WTO. After all, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – an absolute monarchy – acceded to the WTO
in 2005.21
          But, amidst the euphoria of the post-Cold War Washington consensus in favour
of free, open trade, it was widely – and reasonably – expected that China’s economic
liberalisation, and its commercial law reforms, necessitated by WTO Membership, would
extend to some degree into the political realm. What William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
wrote in Act III, Scene 2 of Troilus and Cressida (1602), the words of Troilus, could have
been the words of the WTO Members, and even of some constituencies on the Mainland:

             I am giddy, expectation whirls me round.
             The imaginary relish is so sweet
             That it enchants my sense.22




20
   See 1 Bhala, supra note 6, ch. 20 § I-II.
21
   See Raj Bhala, Saudi Arabia, the WTO, and American Trade Law and Policy, 38 The International Lawyer 741-812
   (2004).
22
   SHAKESPEARE, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, act. 3, sc. 2, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-
   works/troilus-and-cressida/read/3/2/.


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Many, if not most, Members were “giddy” with the “expectation” that China would move,
albeit at its own pace, toward freer, capitalist-style markets. They were “enchanted” by
the “imaginary relish” of Milton Freedman (1912-2006) in his classic Capitalism and Freedom
(1962).
             That is, as the 1976 Nobel Economics laureate indicates in chapter 1 (“The Relation
between Political Freedom and Economic Freedom”) of his book:

               It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and
               largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem
               and material welfare an economic problem; and that any kind of
               political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic
               arrangements. The thesis of this chapter is that such a view is a
               delusion, that there is an intimate connection between economics
               and politics, that only certain combinations of political and economic
               arrangements are possible, and that, in particular, a society which is
               socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual
               freedom.
               Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free
               society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself
               a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is
               an end in itself.        In the second place, economic freedom is also an
               indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.23

So, WTO Members thought (or, at least, hoped) economic liberalism required by China’s
WTO accession commitments (a transition from an almost entirely state-controlled
economy) would lead to expanded political liberalism (some individual democratic-like
liberties). Even though the express texts of GATT-WTO treaties do not link the two, in
theory, and ultimately in practice, economic and political freedoms are intertwined: in
Shakespeare’s phraseology, they “whirl around” together.24 Surely, political domination
by a CCP autocracy ultimately would be incompatible with China’s desire to match the
U.S. economically because openness to trade and investment ultimately somehow leads
to tolerance in governance.


23
     Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom 7-8 (The University of Chicago Press ed., 1962).
24
     Arguably, the way in which certain provisions of these treaties are applied, such as the use of GATT Article
     XX(a), XX(e), and XXI, concerning (respectively) exceptions for public morality, prison labour, and national
     security, aim to advance democratic principles. See 2 Bhala, supra note 6, ch. 40-42 (public morality), 2 Bhala,
     supra note 7, ch. 17, 19 (national security), 3 Bhala, supra note 6, ch. 22-23 (labor issues).


                                                           6
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Surely not. That expectation was dashed – worse yet, in both the economic and political
sense. The apt phrase attributed to Shakespeare comes from Act III, Scene 1 of Hamlet
(1599-1601). The protagonist says in his famous “To be or not to be” a soliloquy:

            [. . .] and by a sleep to say we end
            The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
            That flesh is heir to.25

Perhaps from Hamlet’s statement is the proverb Shakespeare is said to have coined,
namely, “expectation is the root of all heartache.” 26
          China’s post-accession behaviour in the WTO entailed a “thousand shocks”,
which caused a “heartache” “rooted” in disappointed expectations.                            As China’s
participation in the WTO continued in the early 2000s, America and many other WTO
Members felt China failed to play by WTO rules. For example, China did not grant foreign
banks the licences to do business (including retail deposit-taking and local currency
lending) across the Mainland (not only on its Eastern Seaboard in the
Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou corridor, but inland as well), which China supposedly
promised it would.27 As another example demonstrates, China discriminated in favour of
its own credit card and payment system providers against MasterCard and Visa.28
          But were the expectations of the Americans disappointed because of the CCP? Or,
perhaps, did they crash upon lessons not learned from the most basic of first-year law
school courses: Legal Writing? It became clear the U.S. and its WTO Member-Allies
arguably had not nailed down China’s commitments in its WTO Accession Protocol the way
they thought they had. In particular, on key points, they accepted promises from the
CCP that it would push through future legal reform, after joining the Club, rather than
insisting on implementation of conforming legislation before gaining Membership.
          By no means did pre-Trump American Administrations accept the inevitability
of a “heartache.” To the contrary, successive U.S. Presidents before President Donald J.
Trump (1946-, President, 2017-2021) laboured mightily for a cure. Specifically, during the
Administrations of Presidents George W. Bush (1946-, President, 2001-2009) and Barack H.
Obama (1961-, President, 2009-2017), before the Trade War, the U.S. strategy pursued a
two-track strategy with China:

25
   SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, act. 3, sc.1, https://publictheater.org/contentassets/696d609cf4fe4451a9de5eb46867
   aa67/scripts/bns_week8_hamlet.pdf.
26
   See Expectation Is The Root Of All Heartache, SHAKESPEARE GEEK, https://www.shakespearegeek.com/2010/08/
   expectation-is-the-root-of-all-heartache.html/.
27
   See 1 Bhala, supra note 6, ch. 20 § I-II.
28
   See World Trade Organization, DS 413: China – Certain Measures Affecting Electronic Payment Services,
   https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds413_e.htm.


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llVOLUME 8                                    llISSUE 2                         OBITER DICTUM



             (1) Dialogue –
                      The U.S. (in partnership with Allies) held regular discussions
             with China to discuss their concerns about China’s implementation of
             the specific commitments it made in its 2001 Protocol of Accession, and
             in general to GATT-WTO rules.29              Their talks also embraced
             WTO-related issues not explicitly covered by the Protocol or WTO
             treaties, most notably, currency manipulation.
                      (2) Litigation –
                      The U.S. (along with other WTO Members, including
             Australia, Canada, EU, and South Africa) brought dozens, indeed,
             hundreds, of trade remedy cases against China: with respect to unfair
             trade; anti-dumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) contentions;
             and with respect to fair trade, safeguard actions.. The cases were
             lodged at the WTO level and in domestic adjudicatory systems. For
             instance, they involved allegations that China dumped steel products
             in Western markets, and shipping illegally subsidised aluminium
             merchandise to those markets (AD and CVD cases, respectively).
             Chinese car tires surged into the U.S. (triggering an Obama-era
             safeguard case).

Alas, the dual strategy of litigation and dialogue failed. In retrospect, that America (and
its Allies) would be disappointed in their expectations of success is unsurprising. That is
for three reasons.
            First, dialogue-litigation was an episodic strategy, but the problems posed by how
the CCP governed China’s trade relations with the world were systemic. A trade case on
steel or discussions on banking licences could not cover the broad, deep problem that
the CCP – especially under the new, starting in November 2012 of President Xi Jinping
(1953-) – was not as interested in market-based reforms as it had been in the 1980s and
1990s. President Xi certainly appreciated that he could not mercilessly privatise state-
owned enterprises (SOEs) and state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs), and subject them
to competition from American, European, and Japanese entities. Or, radically devalue the
Chinese yuan to address concerns from overseas regarding currency manipulation. Such
measures – however much they were expected of China under the letter or spirit of its WTO
accession commitments – would be a recipe for social unrest that could undermine the grip
on power of the CCP. Millions of workers might be laid off, and vent their frustrations in
29
     Protocol of accession of the Public Republic of China to WTO, Nov.                   23,   2001,
     https://worldtradelaw.net/document.php?id=misc/ChinaAccessionProtocol.pdf&mode=download.


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llVOLUME 8                                      llISSUE 2                              OBITER DICTUM



violent protests against a Communist Party that had breached its social contract with the
Chinese people ever since 1 October 1949: a trade of economic prosperity in exchange for
political constraints.
          Second, this new CCP leadership, itself, was more nationalistic, and insistent on
the great renewal of China. It saw concessions to foreigners today through the lens of the
humiliating concessions of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking (ending the first, 1839-1842, Opium
War).30 China was not to be carved up again by what it called “unequal treaties”,
imposed by neo-colonialist hegemons in the WTO, the way it had been by gunboat
colonialists of the imperial period. Indeed, in the present Trade War, the seemingly
endless rounds of American measures and tit-for-tat Chinese countermeasures evinces
the dragon’s determination to fight back against the eagle.
          Third, China had big ambitions: power overseas and unity at home. Externally,
the CCP wanted reunification with Taiwan, even by force if necessary. It wanted to assert
sovereignty across the Nine Dash Line of the South China Sea. Internally, the CCP expected
Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet and Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang to behave under the Party –
or dare it be said, male-dominated Han – leadership.
          In America, the dashing of expectations that Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama
dialogue-litigation would cajole China to change its offensive trade acts, policies, and
practices coincided with an economic phenomenon that had grave political
consequences: the loss of approximately two million manufacturing jobs in the U.S.,
particularly, in States rich with Electoral College votes.31
          Enter Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Though the facts were that most
of the job losses and income erosion was due to changes in technology across the 20-year
period, 2001-2016, when China entered the WTO, the narrative of blaming China caught
fire across the American electorate. Forget dialogue and litigation. It was time for an
“America First” trade policy, toward China and, indeed, the world.
          With the March 2018 publication by the United States Trade Representative
(USTR) of a well-documented report under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974,
accordingly amended,32 the Trade War was launched. Stiff tariffs on Chinese-origin
merchandise ensued. Further justification for the successive waves of Section 301 tariffs
came from two follow up reports – one in November 2018 by the USTR under Section 301,
and one in June 2018 from the White House on Chinese economic aggression. The CCP’s
reaction quickly exacerbated the conflict: to each American measure came a Chinese
30
   See John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854
   (Harvard University Press ed., 1953).
31
   See 1 Bhala, , supra note 6, ch. 11 § V.
32
   See 19 U.S.C. § 2411 et seq.


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llVOLUME 8                                     llISSUE 2                            OBITER DICTUM



countermeasure. The cycles of tit-for-tat retaliation continue. Ominously, the theatres
of battle have expanded from tariffs to non-tariff barriers (NTBs), to human rights (most
notably over Hong Kong), and to sabre-rattling over Taiwan.
            Shakespeare again furnishes the perfect proverb to capture the status quo, and the
status futurus, that is, where America, China, and the world now are, and where they appear
headed. In Act II, Scene 1 of All’s Well that Ends Well (1601-1605), Helena observes:

             Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and
             oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.33

China’s long odyssey back into the world trading system “promised” the “most,” and
“expectations failed.” “Hope” now is “cold.” “Despair” seems to “fit.” Or, perhaps, the
Americans and Chinese can figure out a way to “end well” their Trade War for the benefit
of “all”.
                                                                                               Raj Bhala
                                                            Brenneisen Distinguished Professor of Law
                                                                  University of Kansas, United States*




33
  SHAKESPEARE, ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, act 2, sc. 1, http://www.literaturepage.com/read/shakespeare-
  alls-well-that-ends-well-22.html.
* The views of the Author do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Kansas, Dentons, Bloomberg
  Quint / BQ Prime, or any other institution with which the Author is or has been affiliated, nor do they
  necessarily reflect those of any clients or others associated with these entities.


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