Friday, July 21, 2017

China and US Fail to Come to Agreement on Trade Journal


journaldumaghreb.com


Image from, with caption: White House senior adviser Jared Kushner is joined by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, left, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue at the Treasury Department on July 19. Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

Excerpt:
China acknowledged a shared goal of reducing the trade deficit with the United States during day-long talks, the U.S. Treasury said on Wednesday. ...

Though President Trump and Xi Jinping (General Secretary of the Communist Party and China's leader) have enjoyed a positive public relationship, the American Head of State was very critical of China during his ultimately successful election campaign in 2016, in which he regularly labelled the country as an enemy of the USA and claimed it was responsible for the loss of U.S. jobs.

While that stance means China remains vulnerable to USA protectionism, the approach "seems to reduce the risk of more significant harm to China's exports to the US", said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong. At a nearby event highlighting products made in America - the theme the White House had chosen for the week - President Trump pledged to "crack down on foreign countries that cheat". "We should pursue these areas of common interest", he said.

Chinese leaders are readily reaping the public diplomacy benefits of Western dissensions with Europe teaming up with China to emphasize Donald Trump's poor manners. ...

President Trump has previously signalled that China might obtain improved trade terms in exchange for help on North Korea. He said the talks had been "more frequent and intense" than intricate, lengthy talks surrounding China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization. ...

"The United States and China must also work together - both bilaterally and multilaterally - to foster a healthy and sustainable global economy". Shortly after the opening remarks, the USA announced it would not be holding its previously scheduled press conference at the close of the session. "Part of it is theatrics. We barely started this, but the Chinese have already gone about as far as they were going to go in the near future", he [JB - Leland Miller, president of China Beige Book International, a statement which the above article left unattributed; see.]

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