China, US to talk tariffs this month
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A CHINESE delegation, led by Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen, will visit the United States late this month for talks on bilateral economic and trade issues, the Ministry of Commerce announced yesterday.
Wang is also the deputy China international trade representative. The American delegation will be led by David Malpass, under secretary for international affairs at the US Department of the Treasury.
China has reaffirmed its stance of opposing unilateralism and trade protectionism, and not accepting any forms of unilateral restrictive trade measures, according to a statement by the commerce ministry posted on its website.
China welcomes dialogue and communication on the basis of reciprocity, equality and integrity, according to the statement.
While the engagement, at the invitation of the US side, was seen by analysts and business officials as positive, they cautioned that the talks were unlikely to lead to a breakthrough given they are among lower-level officials and led on the US side by the Treasury Department, not the US Trade Representative.
“It is hard to tell how the talks will go but it’s a positive signal that the two countries are looking for some compromise plan,” said Makoto Sengoku, market analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute.
“If they were determined to fight it out, they wouldn’t meet,” he added.
The world’s two largest economies have slapped tariffs on tens of billions of dollars worth of each other’s goods since they held their last high-level meeting in June, and have threatened further duties on exports worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
“The lower rank of the delegation suggests that both sides remain far apart, and an agreement during this visit is very unlikely,” Jonas Short, head of the Beijing office at investment bank Everbright Sun Hung Kai, wrote in a note.
The meeting would end what had been a lull in talks between the two sides, but it is unclear whether it will take place before or after next Thursday, when the two countries are expected to launch a new round of tit-for-tat tariffs on US$16 billion worth of goods from each country.
The last official round of talks was held in early June when Chinese Vice Premier Liu He met US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in Beijing.
Liu had met with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Washington a month earlier.
The upcoming meeting in the US will be held at a lower-level compared with four earlier rounds of talks.
The US Treasury Department, led by Mnuchin, has been viewed as most opposed to tariffs among key Trump administration agencies, espousing a more moderate approach to China than trade hardliners such as the USTR’s Robert Lighthizer.
After negotiations in Washington in May, Beijing believed it had assurances from the US that tariffs were off the table, with Mnuchin saying the trade war and tariffs were “on hold.”
But less than 10 days later, the White House said it would push forward on planned tariffs on US$50 billion of Chinese imports and press ahead with restrictions on investments by Chinese companies in the US.
“This looks like it will be a waste of time for the two governments ... Who thinks the US Treasury Dept is empowered to make THE deal to end the trade war?” Scott Kennedy, deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote on Twitter.
Chinese officials say the tariffs have yet to have an impact on the country’s economy, with its exports even beating forecasts in July.
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