Shanghai International Shipping Institute

ALIBABA chairman Jack Ma has joined a growing chorus of industry opponents to a tit-for-tat trade war between China and the US, urging US President Donald Trump to abandon his protectionist rhetoric, while embracing "American-led globalisation."

Mr Ma's commentary on the Alibaba Group's news hub, Alizila, pointed out the benefits to the US and China, making an example of US tech giant Apple. "The company designs the iPhone and develops proprietary chips and software in California," but, "It makes the units through contractors that hire millions of workers in China, assembling components manufactured in South Korea."

China and South Korea benefit from manufacturing the product, and the air cargo sector benefits from the logistics, but "Americans make almost all of the profits," which are excluded from balance-of-trade calculations, reported New York's Air Cargo World.

Protectionism would not help the American economy and would, in fact, hurt "millions of American small business and farmers," Mr Ma said. "Any country seeking to increase exports would do better to focus on developing good products and channels to access foreign markets rather than putting up trade barriers."

Changes happening now in the global economy mean the US-China trade relationship over the next 20 years "will look very different from the past two decades," but also present enormous opportunity for the US, he continued.
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