This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 11, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Alibaba Group co-founder Jack Ma said the US is expected to suffer more from the trade war with China due to its trade deficit with China.

Ma said it is not just the US and China that will be affected by the trade war.

Countries that are connected to the US and China will also be affected by the trade war, which is expected to last for a very long time, he added.

“The [US] trade deficit was a problem accumulated over the past few decades, and it cannot be solved overnight,” Ma said at the South China Morning Post’s China Conference here yesterday, via a conference call.

“We should focus on creating opportunity, and improving the education system,” he said.

Ma believes that the solution for the trade war is technology.

He said for the future, trade is not going to be about business to consumer, but consumer to business.

Ma noted that the world is changing very fast because of e-commerce technology (ET).

“We are moving from IT (information technology) to ET. So, the thinking should be different now,” he added.