Issue of the week: US-China trade talks
Covid-19 has added new urgency – and a good deal more acrimony – to talks between Washington and Beijing
In a phone conversation last week, the lead negotiators of the US-China trade deal vowed to “create favourable conditions” to implement phase one of the agreement they made in January. Sadly, there’s little sign of goodwill, said the South China Morning Post. The “ongoing blame game” between the two countries over the spread of coronavirus has prompted “Beijing hawks” to ramp up criticism of the deal and push for changes. President Trump, however, has refused to play ball, arguing that Chinese negotiators only want changes that benefit their side. “Let’s see if they live up to the deal they signed,” he said. Meanwhile, the US president has raised the threat of a new front in the economic conflict. This week, he called on the US federal pension fund to stop investing in Chinese stocks, further escalating tensions with Beijing, which has long worried that he would follow his two-year trade fight with a “financial war”.
In a bid to counter Western accusations, “China’s diplomats have done away with diplomacy” and come out fighting, said Kathrin Hille in the FT. The country’s so-called Wolf Warrior diplomats – named after a set of films in which Chinese forces defeat Western mercenaries – have been flexing their muscles for the past three years. “But the virus has pushed their combative tactics to the centre of Beijing’s foreign policy approach.” And the latest country to feel the heat is Australia. The Canberra government’s call for a World Health Organisation investigation into the origins of the virus in China has prompted an extraordinary retaliation: Beijing is threatening to slap 80% tariffs on Australian barley imports. That’s bad news, said Isabella Kwai in The New York Times, but at least “middle powers” like Australia, and others in Europe and Asia, are finally engaging. Their influence is much needed in the quest to tackle the “diplomatic void” between China’s authoritarian regime and a US government that “cannot be relied on to lead”.
Where does Britain stand in all this, asked Ed Balls in the FT. A UK-US trade deal has long been seen as the launch pad for Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” policy. “But how the UK chooses to engage with Trump’s increasingly belligerent mercantilism could make or break that agenda.” Bilateral talks between the two countries are getting under way and, while there’s little hope of a full trade deal being agreed before this year’s US election, there’s a chance of a “mini-deal” that could include “a range of general declarations, commitments or tariff cuts”. If Britain could go further, by encouraging Washington “to move away from unilateralism and towards re-engagement with the multilateral system, it would do the world a great service”.