After Beijing retaliated to U.S. tariffs, President Donald Trump has now announced a tariff hike to 125 percent on Chinese products—and a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on other countries.

To understand what’s really going on, we’re speaking with one of the world’s leading experts on the Chinese economy.

Christopher Balding was a professor at Peking University’s HSBC School of Business until 2018 when he was fired for pushing back against censorship. Now, he is a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and the founder of New Kite Data Labs.

“I think President Trump wants to push a very deep, ongoing decoupling from China, and I think he wants to promote that decoupling, not just with China, but [by] drawing at least a secondary moat around near allies like Mexico, Canada, parts of Europe, Japan, and South Korea,” Balding says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.