White House downplays likelihood of U.S., China deal
White House, advisers play down likelihood of reaching a deal soon
WASHINGTON >> Trade talks between the United States and China resumed Monday with prospects dimming for a transformative deal, as both sides appeared more focused on preventing tensions from escalating before the 2020 presidential election than on resolving their differences.
Negotiators from both countries are continuing to press for an agreement, but months of meetings have so failed to yield consensus on the most difficult issues and there is little to suggest that a compromise is within reach. Instead, the United States and China appear to be trying to find a path to keep the talks moving forward and to avoid a breakdown that could rattle stock markets and hurt President Donald Trump’s chances of reelection.
Trump and his advisers are playing down the likelihood of reaching an agreement in the short term, and the president suggested Friday that China was trying to drag out the negotiations in the hope that someone else might occupy the Oval Office come January 2021.
“Meeting after meeting,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think that China will probably say, let’s wait, it’s 14, 15 months till the election. Let’s see if one of these people that give the United States away, let’s see if one of them could possibly get elected.”
Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, tried to lower expectations that any big announcements would come out of the talks in Shanghai this week between Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and their Chinese counterparts.
“I wouldn’t expect any grand deal,” Kudlow said on CNBC on Friday. “I think talking to our negotiators, they are going to kind of reset the stage and hopefully, go back to where the talks left off last May.”
There still appear to be significant differences over how China would enshrine new protections for American intellectual property, how many American products China would agree to buy, and how many of Trump’s tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods would remain in place should a deal be struck.
Negotiators for the United States insist that China must wind the clock back to where it was before the talks stalled. But that seems unlikely to happen, since the objections appear to have come from President Xi Jinping of China himself.