Trump to meet Chinese envoy, lifting hopes for trade talks
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Donald Trump announced yesterday he will meet with China’s top trade envoy as the two sides pursue fraught negotiations that this week appeared headed for a dead end.
In a tweet, Trump said he will meet today (Friday) with Vice Premier Liu He, who returned to the negotiating table on Thursday amid a blitz of aggressive US maneuvers with hopes for a grand bargain between the economic powers this week near zero.
Trump’s announcement sent US stocks surging, calming fears after an overnight news report said the Chinese side could leave early given the slim progress in preliminary talks. After days of gyrations, however, Wall Street was still in the red for the week toward 1500 GMT.
But the atmosphere for the high-stakes parley was shifting rapidly. Liu smiled broadly as he was greeted by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday morning as they resumed senior- level negotiations.
US duties on $250 billion in Chinese imports are due to rise in five days and there was no hiding the sharp deterioration in relations this week.
Trump - who has taken the global economy on a whiteknuckle ride since launching multi-pronged trade offensives with China, Europe and other allies last year - reiterated yesterday that the outcome was down to him.
“Big day of negotiations with China. They want to make a deal but do I?” he said on Twitter.
“I meet with the vice premier tomorrow at the White House.”
Just since Monday, Washington has slapped visa restrictions on senior Chinese officials and blacklisted more than two dozen Chinese firms, accusing them of persecuting ethnic Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region.
The measures have outraged Beijing and in the process penalized major players in the artificial intelligence sector, in which the US and China are intense rivals.
But Trump’s attitude toward the process is subject to sudden change, given the churning pressures competing for his attention.
He is as usual engulfed in turmoil, facing Democrats’ intensifying impeachment probe and stinging criticism from Republicans for effectively allowing a Turkish assault on Us-allied Kurds by pulling American forces away from the border in northeast Syria.
Markets over the prior 24 hours had pinned their hopes on media reports that Beijing will propose a partial trade deal to prevent further escalation. China is willing to bump up purchases of US farm exports and make other concessions but will stop short of addressing Trump’s core grievances, according to reports from Bloomberg and The Financial Times.
In return, Beijing would expect a pause on planned increases in US import tariffs, which are currently scheduled to increase in waves through December.