通过谈判实现双赢，结束中美在技术和关键矿产问题上的双输贸易战

Chad P. Bown.March 2026. ABSTRACT. The United States and China put parts of the global economy at risk in 2025through their trade war over critical minerals and technology. A series ofescalatory tariffs and export restrictions led to shortages of essential inputs,nearly forcing automakers worldwide to shut down production. The costly policiesreflected uncoordinated and uncommunicated efforts by both countries to reducetheir mutual economic dependence. This paper explores a novel path for theUnited States and China to “cooperate” over how they reduce their dependenceon each other in technology and critical minerals, with the aim of limiting futureescalation risks and avoiding unnecessary costs. The proposal draws on aversion of the reciprocal approach to negotiations developed under the GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade, modified to accommodate a mutual reduction ineach country’s market dominance in key sectors. Chad P. Bownis theReginald Jones SeniorFellow at the PetersonInstitute for InternationalEconomics. Author’s Note:KyleBagwell, Emily Blanchard,Martin Chorzempa,Tianlei Huang, Nick Lardy,Stephen Redding, AlanSykes, Ramin Toloui,and participants atthe Hoover InstitutionConference on “The Futureof the GeoEconomicEnvironment” provideduseful comments. AshleySingh and Yuan Liuprovided outstandingresearch assistance.Any remaining errorsare my own. JEL codes:F51, F52, F53, F13.Keywords:economic security, supply chains, tariffs, export restrictions. PIIE gratefully acknowledges the financial support from One True North LLC for theresearch presented in this Working Paper. The research was conducted independently;funders are never given the right to review a publication before its release. INTRODUCTION. The United States and China put parts of the global economy at risk with aspiral of trade policy escalation in 2025. The new Trump administration suddenlyincreased tariffs on goods from China by 145 percentage points—leaving them inplace for a month—causing importers and exporters on both sides of the Pacificto scramble. China retaliated not only with matching tariffs but also by restrictingexports of rare earth elements and permanent magnets, nearly shutting downautomobile supply chains worldwide. Washington responded by expanding its export control regime, first to coverthe software needed to design the chips powering artificial intelligence (AI)and then to include the global subsidiaries of Chinese firms. Beijing counteredby cutting off exports of certain semiconductors that were also essential tocarmakers, nearly slamming the brakes on global auto production for a secondtime in less than six months. Toward the end of the year, Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met inSouth Korea and called a truce, dialing back some of these policies. But manyremained, and the truce seemed fragile. Both the United States and China seek to reduce their mutual economicdependence. Each wants greater autonomy to pursue its own domestic andforeign policy priorities and less vulnerability to external interference. Evenbefore 2025, the two countries had intervened to address those underlyingworries. Their motivations are partly economic, driven by the desire to end themarket dominance of the other. But they are also partly noneconomic. Nationalsecurity concerns, combined with the considerable policy resources available toeach country, make significantly less interdependence in these key sectors seemlike an unavoidable ultimate outcome. The path to achieving that outcome is not yet settled. The lack of US-Chinacooperation and open channels for communication in 2025 revealed the risks ofunnecessary escalation and the implementation of excessively inefficient policies.Some use of trade policy was more restrictive than necessary to achieve thedesired effect of responsible de-risking. Governments also suddenly adoptednew subsidies, bought into companies, implemented price floors, and appliedother far-reachingpolicies. Each has suffered economic costs—from its ownand the other country’s chaotic policies—that could have been avoided. Unlessthe United States and China come together, policies may continue to spiral, andcosts will increase. This paper explores a novel path for US-China “cooperation” over technologyand critical minerals that is explicitly designed to limit the costs of reducingdependencies and the risks of that escalatory spiral. It exploits a versionof the reciprocal trade policy negotiations undertaken during the GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) period. The novelty is the applicationof the fundamentals of creating a mutually beneficial negotiating processto a new setting. The United States and other large industrial economies used reciprocalnegotiations over tariffs repeatedly between 1947 and 1994 to ensure a balancedexchange of market access concessions. This approach allowed them to movecollectively and in an orderly fashion from one outcome (less trade) at the end ofWorld War II to anoth