China said to cancel trade talks as new US tariffs loom
Beijing, China - China has called off planned trade talks with the US and is unlikely to sit down with Washington until after the mid-term elections, according to people familiar with the situation.
Beijing has withdrawn a planned delegation to Washington this week, the people told Bloomberg. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that China had scrapped plans to send Vice Premier Liu He and a mid-level delegation.
In addition to new tariffs on US$200bn of Chinese goods set to go into effect tomorrow, the US State Department sanctions against China’s defence agency and its director on Thursday contributed to the ultimate decision to cancel the talks, the people said.
The White House had no immediate response to China’s latest move.
“It would be ‘asking for an in- sult,’ if China went ahead with trade talks after the US announced new tariffs and sanctions,” Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, said on Saturday. “In the long run, there will be talks, because the trade war won’t last for thousands of years.”
In his push for what he calls a level playing field in dealing with China, President Donald Trump slapped the new tariffs on imports from China and threatened more if Beijing retaliated. On Tuesday, China said it would impose levies on US$60bn worth of US goods effective tomorrow.
The new tariffs brought ‘new uncertainties’ to China-US negotiations, Gao Feng, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce said, when answering a question at a press conference on Thursday on whether the countries would have a new round of trade talks. He used ex- actly the same wording the ministry used in an earlier statement.
The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Finance didn’t respond to faxes inquiring about the matter on Saturday.
Earlier, the Trump administration said it needs to confront China over its trading practices to defend US long-term interests even as the escalation risks are causing pain for American consumers. Inaction would leave the US economy and consumers worse off over the longer run, a senior administration official told reporters on Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
US industry has widely pushed back against the Trump administration’s use of tariffs to force changes to China’s economy, and companies from Walmart Inc to Gap Inc and Samsonite International SA have said they’re prepared to raise prices if the new tariffs bite into their business.
Trump’s biggest strike yet in a growing trade fight between the world’s biggest economies will see a ten per cent duty applied to US$200bn of Chinese imports, which could rise to 25 per cent next year. He’s threatened duties on a further US$267bn of madein-China goods, which would hit almost all other consumer products including mobile phones, shoes and clothes.
The latest round of duties comes on top of a 25 per cent tariff already imposed on about US$50bn in Chinese goods, which spurred counter-tariffs from Beijing.
Trump continued to hit out at China late last week, signaling the trade war won’t end any time soon.
“It’s time to take a stand on China,” he said in an interview on Thursday with Fox News. “We have no choice. It’s been a long time. They’re hurting us.”