Ex-NY mayor opposes tariff plan

Former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will be in Washington this week to lobby against US President Donald Trump’s plans to slap punitive tariffs on China’s exports.

The founder of Bloomberg Limited Partners called this a critical moment.

“Leaders in Washington are considering new trade policies that would unfortunately harm our economy, would kill jobs, would slow innovation, and strain ties with nations around the world, including China, and we just cannot let that happen,” he said.

He reiterated that the US and China are closely interconnected and each country has a strong stake in the economic prosperity of the other.

“Cooperation between the US and China is critical to meeting all of the challenges facing our world, from economic growth and trade to security and climate change,” the media mogul said.

Bloomberg said he will travel to Washington “to see people tomorrow and that will be my message, that we just have to find ways to work together. Other countries around the world, again, including China, are responding with their tariffs and we don’t need a trade war. “We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said.

Bloomberg was speaking at the 2018 International Finance and Infrastructure Cooperation Forum, held at Bloomberg headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

The forum, which marked its second year, was co-hosted by Bloomberg Limited Partners and the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA.

Joining the forum were Chinese and US government officials and more than 300 senior business executives and financial professionals who discussed investment trends in China’s bond and equity markets and cooperation in US infrastructure.

A sensitive time

Xu Chen, chairman of the chamber and president and chief executive of Bank of China USA, agreed with Bloomberg that the two countries are in a sensitive time for bilateral economic and trade relations under the current administration.

Xu said member companies of the chamber have cumulatively invested more than $120 billion in the US economy and directly and indirectly support over 1 million US jobs.

Anthony Foxx, US Secretary of Transportation from 2013 to 2017 and managing partner of Related Infrastructure, said in an interview that there is generally concern among a lot of people in different industries that rely on various source material from China or products from China.

“Hopefully things will get worked out at the top,” he added. “The economies of both countries are just too big for there to be a prolonged fight and so I just hope that their cooler heads prevail at the end of the day.”