US self-harming with tech decoupling bid

The White House now seems determined to try and reverse the trend of the past more than 40 years of the United States and China becoming ever more interdependent.

The US president, in an interview with Fox News last week, again raised the notion of completely severing ties with China, saying "if they don't treat us right, I would certainly do that".

Complete decoupling is unfeasible and undesirable as the White House knows, as trying to decouple countries with complex economic relations is like carrying out a difficult surgical operation, as Henry Farrell, a professor at George Washington University, observed. China "is not a discrete organism that can easily be separated from the global economy but rather a Siamese twin, connected by nervous tissue, common organs, and a shared circulatory system".