U.S. tariff war threatens global free trade: Chinese expert

(ECNS) -- The Trump administration's aggressive tariff policies, especially those targeting China, are undermining the foundations of global free trade, a Chinese expert warns.

Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has unveiled a series of sweeping tariff moves, hiking tariffs on Chinese imports from a minimum of 145 percent to as high as 245 percent on certain goods.

The trade war is wrong and damages free trade because it throws all the rules of the game out of the window, said Gao Zhikai, vice president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, during an interview on Al Arabiya News.

China advocates free trade and it is the largest trading partner with more than 140 countries and regions in the world, Gao said. "By practicing free trade, China is number one in terms of international trade with the rest of the world."

China wants to promote peace with the United States, but if the U.S. dares to impose war -- any kind of war -- China will fight back, he stressed.

He further pointed out that China today is the most important stabilizing force in the world, while the U.S. is eager to use war to solve its geopolitical problems.

He noted that since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. has been involved in many wars, while China has engaged in "zero" conflicts.

This represents China's track record in defending peace, and that of the United States, he said.

He warns that if things are not handled well, China-U.S. trade may stop: no goods exported from the U.S. to China and a complete stop of everything made in China to the U.S.

From China's point of view, the world in the future should be a world of peace, a world everyone every country will be treated equal, every country respects each other, and no country will be allowed to dominate against any other country, he said.

MAGA, or Make America Great Again, is fine, but you can't achieve that at the expense of other countries, Gao noted. "You can't achieve your greatness by belittling other countries to the lowest echelon of the hierarchy."

He warned that no country should be allowed to trample rules of free trade, to trample international order, to dictate others, to issue ultimatums, and to hold a gun at the head of others.

He called it "the law of the jungle", and China will never have a part of that.

(By Mo Honge)