Trump downplays US-China talks

Hearings on tariff proposals start

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump does not expect much progress from trade talks with China this week in Washington.

Trump said in an interview with Reuters on Monday that he had “no time frame” for ending the trade dispute with China, which threatens to impose tariffs on virtually all goods traded between the world’s two largest economies.

“I’m like them; I have a long horizon,” he added.

The talks this week come as new US tariffs on $16 billion of Chinese goods take effect at 12.01 a.m. (11.01 a.m. Bangkok time) tomorrow, along with retaliatory tariffs from Beijing on an equal amount of US goods.

The US Trade Representative’s Office is also holding hearings this week on proposals for tariffs on a further $200 billion of Chinese goods that will start to directly hit consumer products.

Unlike previous rounds of US tariffs, which sought to shield consumers by targeting Chinese industrial machinery, electronic components and other intermediate goods, thousands of consumer products could be directly hit with higher tariffs by late September.

In more than 1,400 written comments submitted to USTR, most businesses argue the tariffs will cause harm and higher costs for products ranging from Halloween costumes and Christmas lights to nuclear fuel inputs, while a small number praise them or ask that they be extended to other products.

Trump said Chinese negotiators would be arriving shortly, adding he did not “anticipate much” from the midlevel discussions.

He said resolving the trade dispute with China “will take time because China’s done too well for too long, and they’ve become spoiled. They dealt with people that, frankly, didn’t know what they were doing, to allow us to get into this position.”

Trump also accused China of manipulating its yuan currency to make up for having to pay tariffs imposed by Washington, while arguing the US central bank should be more accommodating.

The two-day meeting, starting today in Washington, are the first formal US-China trade talks since June, when US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross met Chinese economic adviser Liu He in Beijing but returned with no agreements.

Since then, Washington and Beijing have been locked in escalating rounds of tit-fortat tariffs, with tariffs on $50 billion in goods by each country expected to be in place by Thursday.

Trump has threatened to impose duties on virtually all of the more than $500 billion of Chinese goods exported to the United States.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about Trump’s comments at a regular news briefing in Beijing, reiterated that China hoped the talks could reach a “good result”.

“We hope that both sides can sit down quietly and steadily, and dedicate themselves to getting a good result on the basis of equality, parity and trust,” he said.

Trump’s tariffs are part of his administration’s effort to pressure China into making major changes to its economic policies to better protect intellectual property, end its industrial subsidy efforts and open its markets to foreign competition.

Beijing denies US allegations that it systematically forces the unfair transfer of U.S. technology and insists that it adheres to World Trade Organization rules.

The Washington talks will be led by US Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass and Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen.