Long before the proposed Board of Trade, the United States and China made several attempts to manage trade disputes and stabilise economic ties through institutional dialogue mechanisms.
One of the earliest efforts came in 1983 with the creation of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), an annual high-level forum designed to address bilateral trade issues, promote commercial cooperation and remove systemic barriers between the two economies.
As relations improved over the following decades, the JCCT gained greater political weight. The forum was co-chaired by the US Secretary of Commerce, the US Trade Representative, and a Chinese vice premier, making it one of the most important channels for economic dialogue between Washington and Beijing.
In 2009, under former US President Barack Obama, the two sides launched another initiative known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED).
The mechanism emerged alongside the Obama administration’s broader “Pivot to Asia” strategy, which reflected Washington’s growing focus on China’s expanding economic and geopolitical influence.
At the time, some analysts viewed the S&ED as a potential foundation for a broader “G2” relationship, a concept proposed by economist Fred Bergsten in 2005 to describe a possible framework of joint global leadership between the US and China.
Despite initial optimism, however, neither the JCCT nor the S&ED survived the growing trade tensions and strategic competition that later defined relations between the two powers.
“While both initiatives functioned as early prototypes of newly-announced board-of-trade, providing ministerial-level forums for commercial negotiation, both gradually became dysfunctional,” Babacan tells TRT World.
During Donald Trump’s first term in 2017, as trade tensions with China intensified, both the JCCT and the S&ED were effectively suspended, weakening formal dialogue channels between the two sides.
The following year saw the outbreak of the first major US-China trade war after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese exports.
A similar pattern re-emerged during Trump’s second administration last year, when Washington imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods, triggering uncertainty not only in American and Chinese markets but also throughout the global economy.
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The collapse of earlier dialogue mechanisms, such as the JCCT and S&ED, has left many analysts sceptical about whether new initiatives, such as the proposed Board of Trade, can succeed, particularly as China grows more assertive across areas ranging from military power to trade, technology and global diplomacy.
At the same time, Beijing has increasingly prioritised self-reliance and diversification in strategic sectors such as energy, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing, reducing its vulnerability to external pressure.
Some experts also argue that institutional trade frameworks tend to function more effectively between unequal partners than between powers with relatively comparable economic and geopolitical weight.
“In the US-Japanese context for example, where under the Harris Treaty of 1858 and subsequent commercial conventions, asymmetric trade terms were imposed on Japan is a reminder that bilateral trade boards, when formed between unequal powers, tend to solidify rather than reduce power asymmetries,” Babacan says.
Following World War II, Japan’s economic rise was closely tied to US assistance and economic models, with Tokyo broadly operating within a US-led international order.
But analysts say the situation is fundamentally different with China, which sees itself as a global power capable of negotiating with Washington on equal footing.
This is “an important point much relevant to any US-China arrangement given Beijing’s insistence that any agreement must rely on ‘equality and mutual respect’,” Babacan says.
“If a US-China board of trade would be constituted —whether modeled on the JCCT’s functional scope, expanded to involve investment screening coordination, technology transfer rules and sectoral market access commitments; or structured more ambitiously as a standing bilateral trade court with a binding arbitration— it might well have a substantial and significant impact but it’s all conditional.”
Despite those uncertainties, experts say a functioning trade mechanism between Washington and Beijing could still bring important economic benefits and reduce volatility across global markets.
“It could reduce the estimated $316 billion in annual bilateral trade costs from tariffs and non-tariff uncertainties and provide a wall against escalatory tariff spirals, and potentially serve as the core of a broader multilateral framework reform at multilateral (i.e. the WTO) level,” Babacan says.
“However, such a body’s effectiveness would hinge critically on whether it possesses a sound and real enforcement authority and on whether both sides could agree on a common credible standard for issues like subsidies and market distortion disciplines which lie at the heart of the bilateral commercial conflict.”
