China stands its ground against Trump trade war

If Chinese President Xi Jinping is getting ready to make big concessions to the U.S., his much anticipated speech at a Shanghai trade fair didn’t show it.

Xi hit back against President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies Monday with some of his most pointed language yet, denouncing “law of the jungle” and “beggar-thy-neighbor” trade practices. At the same time, he didn’t outline any new proposals that would suggest he was prepared to meet Trump’s demands, such as halting forced technology transfers or rolling back support for state-owned enterprises. Stocks declined across Asia.

“All countries should strive to improve their business environment and solve their own problems,” Xi told the inaugural China International Import Expo, which featured more than 3,600 companies from 172 countries, regions and organizations. “They shouldn’t always whitewash themselves and blame others, or act like a flashlight that only exposes others, but not themselves.”

Xi stopped short of naming Trump or the U.S. in the speech. Instead, he stepped up warnings that protectionism would harm global growth while pledging to boost domestic consumption, strengthen intellectual property protection and advance trade talks with Europe, Japan and South Korea.

While Trump has floated the possibility of a deal when he meets Xi in the coming weeks, the two sides remain far apart on resolving key U.S. complaints. Investors watching Xi’s speech for evidence that China was serious about accelerating its economic opening and wanted a quick resolution to the trade war were left underwhelmed.

“He repeated a lot of the planned policies we have already heard in the past few months,” said Sue Trinh, head of Asia FX Strategy at RBC Capital Markets in Hong Kong.

Enthusiasm wasn’t high in the run-up to the event. While 18 heads of state or government are slated to attend, virtually all are from small economies. Of G-20 countries, only Russia is sending a head of state or government.

Although the event was meant to gather foreign companies to woo Chinese consumers, global brands from Adidas to Walmart, Procter & Gamble to Uniqlo, were sending only country heads — or no senior executives at all. Starbucks Corp. CEO Kevin Johnson, whose company opens a store in China every 15 hours, won’t be attending even though he’ll be in the same city.

That didn’t damp Xi’s efforts to cast himself as one of the world’s chief defenders of globalization. “As globalization deepens, the practices of law of the jungle and winner take all are a dead end,” Xi said.

Trump on Monday said the trade conflict with China could still go either way.

“We’re in a very big dispute with them right now, and we’re winning,” Trump said. China wants to make a deal, but if they don’t that’s fine as well, he said.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund who attended the Shanghai event, called on all parties to de-escalate tensions and “fix the global trade system, not destroy it.”