Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
■ President Donald Trump said tariffs on China will stay as the two nations restart trade talks.
U.S. to hold off on additional trade penalties as talks restart
OSAKA, Japan — President Donald Trump said U.S. tariffs will remain in place against Chinese imports after he and China’s Xi Jinping agreed Saturday to restart trade talks.
Additional trade penalties Trump has threatened against billions worth of other Chinese goods will not take effect for the “time being,” he said after a meeting with Xi during the Group of 20 summit in Osaka.
“We’re going to work with China where we left off,” Trump said.
While Trump said relations with China were “right back on track,” doubts persist about the two nations’ willingness to compromise on a long-term solution. Among the sticking points: The U.S. contends that Beijing steals technology and coerces foreign companies into handing over trade secrets, but China denies it engages in such practices.
Trump said the talks with Xi went “probably even better than expected.”
Both men struck a cautiously optimistic tone after they posed for photographs.
“We’ve had an excellent relationship,” Trump told Xi as the meeting opened, “but we want to do something that will even it up with respect to trade.”
Xi recounted the era of “pingpong diplomacy” that helped jump-start U.S.-China relations two generations ago. Since then, he said, “one basic fact remains unchanged: China and the United States both benefit from cooperation and lose in confrontation.”
“Cooperation and dialogue are better than friction and confrontation,” he added.
Some progress seemed to be made in a dispute involving the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, which the Trump administration has branded a national security threat and barred it from buying American technology. Trump said Saturday he would allow U.S. companies to sell their products to Huawei, but he was not yet willing to remove the company from a trade blacklist.
The U.S. has tried to rally other countries to block Huawei from their upcoming 5G systems.
The United States has imposed 25 percent import taxes on $250 billion in Chinese products and has threatened to target an additional $300 billion, extending the tariffs to nearly everything China ships to America.
China has countered with tariffs on $110 billion in American goods, focusing on agricultural products in a direct shot at Trump supporters.