After standing down with Mexico, US pushes China
Mnuchin urging Beijing back to stalled trade talks
FUKUOKA, Japan — One down, still others to go. President Donald Trump claimed a victory after Washington and Mexico agreed on measures to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States.
Now that Trump called off plans to impose a 5% tax on Mexican exports, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking to reporters Saturday in Fukuoka on the sidelines of a meeting of financial leaders of the Group of 20 major economies, urged China to follow suit and return to stalled negotiations.
Mnuchin said he planned to have a private conversation with the head of China’s central bank, Yi Gang. In a G-20 group meeting later on Saturday, the two were seen exchanging friendly remarks, but there were no fresh signs Beijing is ready to compromise in the dispute over trade and technology.
“From our perspective of where we are now, it is a result of them backtracking on significant commitments,” Mnuchin said. “I don’t think it’s a breakdown in trust or good or bad faith. If they want to come back and complete the deal on the terms we were negotiating, that would be great.”
Mnuchin said he had no direct message to give to Yi, who has participated in the 11 rounds of talks on resolving the dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
He said there were no plans for trade talks in Washington or Beijing before Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping are due to meet June 28-29 in Osaka, Japan, for the G-20 summit.
“This will be a one-on-one with Gov. Yi to talk alone about the trade issues,” Mnuchin said. But he added, “I would expect the main progress will be at the G-20 meetings of the presidents.”
The Trump administration began slapping tariffs on imports of Chinese goods nearly a year ago, accusing Beijing of using predatory means to lend Chinese companies an edge in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and electric vehicles.
Those tactics, the U.S. contends, include hacking into U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, forcing foreign companies to hand over sensitive technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market and unfairly subsidizing Chinese tech firms.
The deal with Mexico helps alleviate uncertainty over the deal Washington recently reached on revising the North American Free Trade Agreement. The new U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal has been heading toward a vote in Congress and might have been stymied by new tariffs.
But the U.S. is still negotiating new trade deals with Japan after withdrawing from a Pacific Rim arrangement, the Obama-era proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
America’s huge trade deficit with China — a record $379 billion last year — is one factor driving Trump’s frustrations with Beijing.
The United States is imposing 25% taxes on $250 billion in Chinese goods. Beijing has counterpunched by targeting $110 billion worth of American products, focusing on farm goods such as soybeans in a deliberate effort to inflict pain on Trump supporters in the U.S. heartland.
The U.S. side has been preparing to expand retaliatory tariff hikes of 25% on another $300 billion of Chinese products, and Mnuchin indicated it was ready to take that step if negotiations with Beijing fail.
But he said Trump had not yet made a decision on that, suggesting room for further delays depending on the outcome of his discussion with Xi later this month.
“As the president has said, if we can get the right agreement, that’s great. If we can’t, we will proceed with tariffs,” he said.
Meanwhile, the US-Mexico deal Trump announced Friday falls short of some of the dramatic overhauls pushed for by his administration.
A joint declaration released by the State Department said the U.S. “will immediately expand” a program that returns asylumseekers, while their claims are under review, to Mexico after they have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexico will “offer jobs, healthcare and education” to those people, according to the agreement.
Mexico has agreed, it said, to “unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration,” including the deployment of the Mexican National Guard throughout the country, especially on its southern border with Guatemala.
Trump put the number of troops at 6,000, and said in a tweet Saturday, “Mexico will try very hard, and if they do that, this will be a very successful agreement for both the United States and Mexico!”
Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump’s “threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy,” especially with “our close friend.”