e Uneven tariff rates and the banning of some US goods e Intellectual property theft
e Forced technology transfer
e Strategic US technology acquisitions
e Outright cyber theft
e Foreign ownership restrictions
Recent headlines that the trade war may be escalating to a cold war are not without merit, as we believe that US-China relations are changing on a more structural basis and will have a longer-term impact. On a short-term basis, however, US exposure to China is limited with merchandise exports, corporate profits and foreign claims at about 1% of GDP. As seen in Exhibit 7, the Chinese equity markets have also deteriorated much more significantly than US markets in 2018.
Of course, specific stocks with greater exposure to China through higher sales have underperformed the S&P 500 by about 6% since the latest tariffs were imposed on $200bn of Chinese products, as shown in Exhibit 8.
Source: Investment Strategy Group, Bloomberg.
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