China says can’t hold US trade talks with ‘knife to the throat’

BEIJING: China said yesterday it was impossible to hold trade talks with the United States while Washington is imposing tariffs that are like “holding a knife to someone’s throat”.

Speaking a day after Washington activated tariffs on US$200 billion in Chinese goods, vice-commerce minister Wang Shouwen said China is open to negotiations but that the two sides must treat each other “equally and with respect”.

“Now that the US has adopted this type of large-scale trade restrictions, they’re holding a knife to someone’s throat. Under these circumstances, how can negotiations proceed?” Wang told a news conference.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had invited Chinese officials to hold new talks, but President Donald Trump’s latest salvo – and warnings that another US$267 billion of goods being lined up – appear to have scuttled that effort.

Wang met US officials in Washington in August but there have been no high-level meetings between the world’s top two economies for months.

He said the US measures “have made it impossible for the negotiations to proceed” and blamed the US for abandoning a consensus on trade that was struck in May, but was quickly followed by new US tariffs.

The trade fight between the top two economic giants has steadily escalated through the summer, as the US levied two waves of new tariffs that have now hit about US$250 billion worth of goods, roughly half of China’s exports to the United States. - AFP