Trump's China trade war risks damaging US economy, says OECD

Intensification of tariff dispute also likely to knock almost $600bn off world economy

Donald Trump has been warned by the west's most influential economics thinktank that further escalation of the US-China trade war would unleash significant damage for the American economy, as well as the rest of the world.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said that an intensification of the dispute between Washington and Beijing would likely knock as much as 0.7% off the level of global GDP by 2021-22.

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US President Donald Trump Trump has often repeated that China pays for US tariffs on its goods. 'We have billions of dollars coming into our treasury from China. We never had 10 cents coming into our treasury; now we have billions coming in' he said on 24 January 2019. On 5 May he tweeted: 'For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA.'