Recently, a group of eminent Chinese/US economists and legal scholars issued a thought-provoking Joint Statement on ‘US–China Trade Relations: A Way Forward’. However, the Joint Statement does not provide practical solutions to the real issues in the bilateral negotiations. Moreover, by granting excessive policy space to the two largest trading nations, it would encourage them to further deviate from WTO rules and undermine the multilateral trading system. Drawing on the Theory of Distortions and Welfare, we put forward an alternative framework for the parties to tackle protectionist and trade distortive policy instruments while leaving sufficient policy space for them to pursue non-protectionist policy goals. Our framework would minimize WTO-inconsistent outcomes and prevent further erosion of the multilateral system as we encourage the parties to negotiate in a WTO-consistent manner. Hopefully, this would also provide the groundwork for more inclusive trade negotiations under the multilateral trading system.

中文翻译：

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中美贸易战：出路？

近日，一批中美著名经济学家和法律学者发表了一篇发人深省的《中美贸易关系：前进之路》联合声明。但是，联合声明并没有为双边谈判中的实际问题提供切实可行的解决方案。此外，给予两个最大贸易国过多的政策空间，将助长它们进一步背离世贸组织规则，破坏多边贸易体制。借鉴扭曲和福利理论，我们提出了一个替代框架，供各方应对保护主义和贸易扭曲性政策工具，同时为他们追求非保护主义政策目标留出足够的政策空间。我们的框架将最大限度地减少与 WTO 不一致的结果，并防止多边体系进一步受到侵蚀，因为我们鼓励各方以与 WTO 一致的方式进行谈判。希望这也能为多边贸易体制下更具包容性的贸易谈判奠定基础。