NPR

Who Wins A U.S.-China Trade War? Maybe Australia

Australia has strong trading ties with China and produces many of the things on Beijing's list of U.S. products that will be hit by stiff tariffs.
An employee inspects almonds moving along a conveyor at a Select Harvests Ltd. plant near Wemen, Australia, in 2016. China has imposed tariffs on U.S. nut exports amid a burgeoning trade war. Australia could help fill the void.

As the U.S. and China ratchet up a tit-for-tat tariff dispute, it has been said often in the last few weeks: "No one wins a trade war."

Nevertheless, staying out of a war is often the best way to win, or at least not to lose.

Take Australia, for example. In the 1990s, as the Asian economic miracle was taking shape, Australian politicians worked hard to overcome the country's geographic and cultural distance from that region to position it on the economic front lines. And while the U.S. has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

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