“China is the enemy of the United States, this is the only point of agreement between the Republicans and the Democrats,” the chief economist of the Carmignac investment fund, Raphaël Gallardo, recently underlined in L’Express. Which does not mean that the choice of the future American president, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is indifferent to him. In fact, the Republican candidate would be favored by the country of Xi Jinping, because he “puts himself at odds with all the potential allies of the United States, and ultimately does not have so much a geostrategic objective as “a strictly personal ambition for power and re-election internally, justifies the economist at the Merics Institute, François Chimits. What bothers Beijing the most is the construction of alliances by the United States”, to the extent that ” the Americans are no longer powerful enough from an economic and geopolitical point of view to, alone, hinder its challenge to the international order.” However, Joe Biden is more inclined to favor such unions than his competitor in the race for the White House.
The tech sector targeted by Biden
Same conclusion regarding trade. The Chinese fear the democrat’s strategy more, more subtle and more harmful for their economy. “Biden has a much more targeted way of approaching the issue, with policy measures limited to high-tech sectors.” Areas in which, precisely, Beijing is seeking to gain power… François Chimits, also affiliated with the Center for Prospective Studies and International Information (CEPII), recalls that the impact of the current president’s decisions has been revealed much more significant for China, reflected in particular in the performance of the Huawei company.
But what about the legendary unpredictability of the Republican, which makes diplomats and traders alike shudder? Certainly, the volatility of financial markets is likely to increase. But Xi Jinping sees further, judges François Chimits. In the short term, “the Chinese are ready to pay the price for the uncertainty linked to Trump, if they benefit from it in the long term.”