How intermingled are political issues with legal issues? In what ways are national and international law being used to pursue political aims? Can they be separated?
In this case certainly both sides, in China and in USA, laws are being used to pursue political objectives. At a very basic since, political objectives are prime purpose of any law. In the context of USA and China trade relations, legal issues are closely intertwined with political issues.
In the case of the USA, the Trump administration has used long “dormant” domestic laws which grant the President authority over trade relations and ability to implement tariffs. For many years these laws were not utilized by the USA in favor of the WTO process. From the Trump Administration’s perspective, the WTO is inadequate in dealing with China’s unfair trade practices, so the USA must utilize long standing domestic laws to place tariffs on Chinese goods in order to protect USA national interests. Fixing unfair trade relationships of the USA was a key platform for which Trump was elected.
On China’s side, China has been using domestic law to achieve political ends for the entire “reform and opening up” period. Chinese industrial and trade policies for the past thirty years have been designed to attract foreign investment, and foreign intellectual property, to raise the level of capital in China, to build industrial capacity in China, and to transition China from a rural economy to a wealthy, urban industrialized economy. These policies for the past 30 years have been extraordinarily successful.
China continues its trend of utilizing domestic law to serve pollical ends in the form of the “Made in China 2015” initiative which targets high technology areas for investment and growth. This is tied to China’s political goal of being a leading technology country.