If you want to know why so many Euro-American thinkers actually support US President Donald J Trump’s trade war tough stand against China, just look at this animated chart from the Financial Times …
… it shows how, in just under 20 years, since 2000, just before China joined the WTO in late 2001, until 2019, that China has, literally, swept up world export market share at the expense of the USA. The fact that Austria and France switched back to buying more goods and services from America might be because some American trade measures may be working … or it may be because Chinese costs of production are rising at a high rate, making Chinese products less competitive.
But, this is the simple answer to the question: why did Donald Trump start a trade war with China?
China’s rise also coincides with the “Greening” of Europe which has resulted in energy policies which export pollution and jobs to China as well as the diversion of resources from Africa, Asia and Australia to China. China, peculiarly, seems to be less pretty about the conditions under which those resources are extracted than the OECD economies which used to buy them.