A call by US President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser for other countries to foot the bill for the “global public goods” provided by the United States has stirred unease among Chinese scholars and prompted some sharp criticism.
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As Stephen Miran, chairman of the Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, lays out options for other countries that range from accepting US tariffs without retaliation to directly writing cheques to the US Treasury, many Chinese academics worry that such coercive actions could exacerbate the chaos spawned by Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” and plunge the world into financial turmoil.
“It’s a thuggish and domineering act, merely dressed up with the lofty justification of providing public goods,” said Zhao Xijun, co-dean at the China Capital Market Research Institute at Renmin University.
He likened the idea of directly transferring money to the US Treasury to “collecting protection money on the streets”.
In a speech earlier this month at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, Miran argued that the US has long shouldered the burden of supplying “global public goods” such as military protection and the US dollar-centred financial system.
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He said other nations had been reaping outsize benefits from that set-up while contributing too little in return. To address what he saw as an imbalance in “burden sharing”, Miran laid out a range of options for foreign governments.
