Illustration: Luo Xuan/GT

Uncertainties originating in the US government - erratic trade policies and coercive speeches demanding the US central bank lift its liquidity sluice gates - are leaving the US economy on tenterhooks, waiting for an imminent distress. 

During the past couple of weeks, the hashtag "Trump Recession" has been trending on social media. The stock market has tumbled and American families are spooked. 

In contrast, China's policymakers are keeping cool and calm, despite the growth of the world's second-largest economy slowing to 6.2 percent for the April to June quarter. Since they cannot persuade the Trump administration to stop the trade battle between the two giants, decision-makers are seeking other avenues to lessen the damage the trade war will have on the Chinese economy. 

For the world's smaller economies, it is better to sit tight because the road ahead will be bumpy and rocky. To make it through, China needs to hold up the banner of free trade and economic globalization, and attract as many nations as possible to combat protectionism and selfishness. 

The odds are higher that a recession will grip the US sometime in 2020, as explicitly indicated by the inverted yield curve of 10-year and two-year US Treasury bonds which triggered a stock crash last week. The latest statistics show that US manufacturing has slowed and lagging business investment has become a serious drag, adding more ominous signs of a recession. 

In an attempt to soothe jittery American families, the White House has accused the Federal Reserve of undermining President Trump's economic policies. 

It has threatened the US central bank will have its interest rates cut by 1 percent and inject more liquidity - an unprecedented move encroaching on the central bank's independence. 

Nobody can predict the fallout if the US Federal Reserve caves in to pressure and inundates the US and global monetary system with printed dollars - at a time when the gross US government deficit has surpassed $22 trillion. 

In the past two months, the US Federal Reserve and 19 other central banks have cut their benchmark interest rates, a move unseen since the 2008 to 2009 US economic recession. 

The other irritant to the global economy, according to renowned economists worldwide, is the fact that the Trump administration has, constantly and steadily, escalated the trade tussle with China over the last 15 months. In early August, Trump again tweeted that the US would impose 10 percent tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods from September 1, though he later postponed some portions of the levy to December 1. China said clearly that it will retaliate. 

If history is a mirror, the US needs only look to previous frantic attempts by their own government to shore up its own economy through protectionist trade policies. 

The 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, for example, also triggered tit-for-tat tariffs and hastened the collapse in global trade. The tariffs caused the US Great Depression in early 1930s. Now, the world is apparently on the cusp of another meltdown due to Washington's high tariffs. 

To overcome the assault of a US-led recession, China ought to take precautionary measures now, including fiscal and monetary stimulation by both the central and provincial governments. One effective step would be to set up a buffer zone, shielding the contagion from spreading to China and Asia. 

Lately, Beijing has moved to curb runaway prices of urban homes by strictly restricting bank loans to property developers. Obviously, Chinese policymakers have presaged the coming global economic storm and are well prepared to weather its impending attack. 

In a previous economic crisis, property prices in Japan grounded to a halt, ensnaring its banking system and causing a long-time economic stagnation there.

China has restructured three local banks in Liaoning Province, Shandong Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which had run into difficulty, as healthy banks backed up by adequate reserve capital are able to weather the siege of a global recession. 

Last but not least, China's Huawei Technologies is galvanizing the nation to resist the tempest. Although the US government placed the tech giant on a blacklist, barring US-based companies from selling supplies to Huawei in a desperate attempt to contain China's rise, Huawei has refused to cower before the bully. 

Huawei's management team, headed by founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei, is a visionary one. They foresaw the danger from the US as early as 2009, and devised a Plan-B by investing heavily in technology research and development, shoring up Huawei's fundamentals by reserving a spate of top-caliber technologies.

Ren said that Huawei's globally advanced 5G gear will prevail without US supplies. The company said it is going to ship 270 million smartphones this year, following just after Sumsung phone sales. In the end, it is American companies that will suffer from the loss of a precious customer in Huawei. As expected, the Trump administration decided to give Huawei a "reprieve of three more months." 

Will the two postponements by the Trump administration - tariffs on some Chinese goods, and supplies to Huawei - prevent distress from forming? Nobody knows the answer. Will President Trump's chances for re-election be diminished by a recession - now believed to be a one-in-three chance outcome? That's even more difficult to gauge. 

The author is an editor with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn