China says all trade progress is off if US imposes tariffs
BEIJING: All commitments made so far in talks with the US over trade will be withdrawn if President Donald Trump carries out his threat to impose tariffs, China said Sunday.
While both sides reported some progress in discussions this weekend about how to reduce China’s US$375bil goods-trade surplus with the US, Trump’s revival last week of a plan to slap tariffs on US$50bil of Chinese imports has cast the talks into turmoil.
“If the US rolls out trade measures including tariffs, all the agreements reached in the negotiations won’t take effect,” state-run Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday, citing a statement from the Chinese team that met with a US delegation led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
The Xinhua report came after Ross met Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He yesterday for talks that Ross called “friendly and frank, and covered some useful topics about specific export items”.
At the same time as negotiators focus on technical steps to reduce the US deficit, Trump’s swerve has rattled Beijing as it raises the possibility that any agreement made could be simply torn up by the president.
“China is concerned over the US’s unpredictability, especially after Trump turned an about-face on tariffs,” said Gai Xinzhe, an analyst at Bank of China’s finance institute in Beijing. “Trump needs to give out more goodwill in exchange for really productive negotiations. Bluff, threat, and willful moves might work in business bargaining, but they could backfire in talks among nations.”
A commentary by state-run China Radio International said that the government’s stance on cancelling any agreements reached in the talks if Trump’s tariffs go into effect was a “red line”.