Suresh Narayanan, Universiti Sains Malaysia: The paper is aptly titled; after reading it I did gain a better understanding of the U.S.-China trade war.
The paper begins by giving a stylized version of four lobby groups and argues that the trade war began in 2018 when the U.S. merchandise trade deficit was under 4 percent of GDP, rather than in 2006, when the U.S. merchandise trade deficit was over 6 percent and because the majority coalition on China trade in 2006 was no longer the majority coalition in 2018. In an interesting discussion of the lobby groups based on their perceived priorities, and in detailing how changes occurred to provide the impetus to trade war in 2018 makes for fascinating reading. While I had little reason to doubt the veracity of claims being made in the first section of the paper, I would have welcomed more systemic evidence to strengthen...