‘No China-US trade talks till after polls’

BEIJING: China has called off planned trade talks with the US and is unlikely to sit down with Washington until after the midterm elections, according to people familiar with the situation.

Beijing has withdrawn a planned delegation to Washington next week, the people told Bloomberg. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that China had scrapped plans to send VicePremier Liu He and a mid-level delegation.

In addition to new tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods set to go into effect September 24, the US state department sanctions against China’s defence agency and its director on Thursday contributed to the ultimate decision to cancel the talks, the people said.

“It would be ‘asking for an insult,’ if China went ahead with trade talks after the US announced new tariffs and sanctions,” Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, said on Saturday. “In the long run, there will be talks, because the trade war won’t last for thousands of years.”

In his push for what he calls a level playing field in dealing with China, President Donald Trump slapped the new tariffs on imports from China and threatened more if Beijing retaliated. On Tuesday, China said it would impose levies on $60 bn worth of US goods effective September 24.

The new tariffs brought “new uncertainties” to China-US negotiations, Gao Feng, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce said, when answering a question at a press conference on Thursday on whether the countries would have a new round of trade talks. He used exactly the same wording the ministry used in an earlier statement.

The Trump administration had said it needs to confront China over its trading practices.