Patent reforms surface U.S. resent over Chinese tech-patenting – retaliation can collapse global trade

Studies in our dominant literature showed how economic and political motivations caused trade wars, which revolved around the Yuan pegging and manipulation (Plender, Citation2019; Rodrik, Citation2018). Other research we cited is the historical US trade imbalance with China since 1986 (USCB, Citation2020; Wu, Citation2020) while pointing fingers at WTO regulatory inadequacies on global trade governance (Sheng et al., Citation2019; Solis, Citation2014). Further study identified the US accusation of China on intellectual property rights (IPR) (Yongding, Citation2018) because it raised national security questions in the US. The consensus is that IPR and patent issues are partly attributed to the US Most-Favoured-Nation’s (MFN) status to China by the previous US administration (Landler, Citation2005). Arguably, China’s MFN status has undermined the US economy, patent rights and innovation (Muehlfeld & Wang, Citation2022; Zubascu, Citation2020).

These studies remind us about the escalating cycle impacts of the US-China trade war on the world’s two largest economies because of their significant contribution to global trade. The escalating tariff retaliation between the US and China on industries, businesses, and consumers and other harmful trade discrimination policies portend a risk and frontal challenges to the global trade order. Research by (Rodrik, Citation2018, Lawrence, Citation2018; Shaffer, Citation2021) has demonstrated how US-China trade largely undermines the WTO’s rule-based multilateral trading system and affects the global growth prospects of countries with the worst and darkest economic scenarios (Steinbock, Citation2019). As Yao (Citation2018) noted, the US-China trade war has disrupted world trade, costing the world more than a US$430 billion loss in GDP.