China promises to buy more U.S. goods
But pledge fails to deal with basic trade imbalance
WASHINGTON — Chinese officials are hoping to mollify President Donald Trump’s oft-stated displeasure with America’s huge trade imbalance with China by pledging to import billions more of made-inU.S.A. products.
Whether Beijing’s promised shopping spree and other concessions, made during talks this week in Washington, will lead to a detente in what has been a simmering trade conflict is not clear.
A person familiar with the discussions did not indicate the amount or timetable for the proposed purchases, but analysts doubted that China could boost imports fast enough or in the amounts needed to meet earlier demands by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other U.S. officials came away empty after talks two weeks ago in Beijing. Trump to shave more than half of the $370-billion merchandise trade surplus with the United States by 2020.
More importantly, they said such purchases would do little to address systemic problems in the trading relationship and American grievances involving China’s aggressive industrial policies.
Many U.S. businesses have complained about China’s theft of intellectual property and f orced technology transfers to do business there.
American business groups with interests in China still were encouraged by the continuing dialogue and noted that the latest visit by the Beijing dele- gation, led by Vice Premier Liu He, marked a sharp contrast to Liu’s previous meeting in Washington in February, when the highlevel emissary was practically snubbed by Trump.
The president announced tariffs targeting Chinese steel on the day Liu was holding talks with administration officials.
Trump received Liu on Thursday in the Oval Office and tweeted a photo of the two men in a handshake.
Just two weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and other senior administration officials, in a visit to Beijing, came away empty after exchanging unusually tough demands with Liu and other Chinese officials.
“They were pretty far apart and (had) a wide gap to overcome, so I think it’s good that on a pretty quick basis that Vice Premier Liu comes here to continue discussions,” said John Frisbie, president of the U.S.China Business Council, which represents some 200 large companies doing business in China, including General Motors, Walmart and FedEx.
He said he hoped for an “early harvest,” or some immediate outcomes, to emerge from the two days of talks that could defuse tensions and help lead both sides to step back from threats of massive tariffs that have stoked fears of a trade war.
But Frisbie said any short-term results should not come at the expense of dealing with the structural issues in the relationship.
At the top of the Trump administration’s demands outlined two weeks ago was a $200 billion reduction in China’s trade surplus with the United States, reflecting the president’s perspective of the bilateral trade number as the key scorecard, even though economists view the U.S. trade deficit as caused by a mismatch between the nation’s savings and investments.
China’s response in committing to ramp up purchases of American goods was aimed at soothing Trump’s personal sore point with China, but experts said it was hard to see how Beijing could make a big dent in the deficit anytime soon.
China can buy only so many Boeing airplanes and soybeans, the top two U.S. imports in China. Beijing could direct Chinese firms to shift purchases from other countries to the U.S., but that would present problems for China’s relations with other nations.
The Chinese proposal was said to include importing America’s growing production of energy resources like natural gas, but a lack of pipeline and other U.S. infrastructure constraints would limit such purchases in the near-term.