Todd Bishop
China and the United States will hold a new round of trade talks in Washington in October, and senior US officials have come out to express their views in the past few days. US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin stressed the positive side of China-US negotiations.
Mnuchin stressed that China and the United States have a consensus
US Finance Minister Steven Mnuchin said in an interview with Fox on September 9 that the United States reached a “conceptual” consensus with China on how to implement the agreement, emphasizing that the trade negotiations have made positive progress.
“I think we have reached a conceptual consensus at least in the field of implementation,” Mnutin told Fox.
As the US-China trade talks begin in the coming weeks, Mnuchin said that US officials still hope to “achieve a good agreement with Beijing.”
Mnuchin said: “We are ready to negotiate. If we can reach a good deal, a deal that is beneficial to us, we will sign it. If not, the president can continue to impose tariffs.”
Mnuchin said that the Donald Trump government “has not seen any impact on the US economy related to the trade war,” and expects “this year will have a very strong end.”
He also said that although “in some cases, companies have encountered difficulties,” US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer “has done a great job in exempting cases on a case-by-case basis.”
On the same day, Mnuchin told reporters at the White House that the Governor of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, would also participate in the October negotiations. Part of the dialogue was about currency and China’s currency manipulation.
It is reported that Chinese deputy ministerial officials will visit Washington in mid-September, and then Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Wright Heze will meet in Washington in early October to hold the thirteenth round of trade negotiations. . It is worth mentioning that this negotiation was originally scheduled to be held in Washington in September. However, due to the new tariff imposed on China by the United States, the negotiations were affected and delayed until October.
Navarro emphasizes differences between China and the United States
For the October negotiations, Peter Navarro, a senior official of the White House Eagles, clearly stated in the interview with Yahoo Finance on September 8 that the United States is expecting the next round of US-China trade negotiations. He emphasized the differences between China and the United States.
When talking about the agreement in the negotiations in May this year, Navarro said that the two sides have reached an agreement of more than 150 pages. In seven aspects, each issue and the implementation agreement have passed 11 negotiations between the two sides. Details include punctuation and paragraphs. And that is the basis for the two sides to move forward. Navarro stressed, but the Chinese government turned against the agreement.
Navarro insisted that the United States needs to return to the original agreement, and that seven aspects deal with all these structural problems.
However, the Chinese side has always been dissatisfied with the draft agreement. It is precisely because of this that there is an upgrade of the trade war. It is reported that the China-US trade war has lasted for more than a year. The two sides have also experienced more than 10 rounds of negotiations and reached a draft agreement in May. However, China temporarily revised the contents of the draft agreement and deleted a lot of content, which made Washington Very dissatisfied, which led to the further escalation of the trade war and the stalemate in trade negotiations. Washington has repeatedly pointed out that China has turned its back on its promises, while the Chinese side said that before the agreement was reached, any changes were reasonable, and Washington did not have to react excessively.
As for why China suddenly wants to amend the contents of the draft agreement, the outside world is also divided. The Nikkei Asian Review said that sources familiar with China-US relations pointed out that the Chinese leadership believes that part of the draft agreement is equivalent to an “unequal treaty.” All those terms that are considered “inequal” are removed or modified.
Kudlow: The United States is ready to fight a protracted war
Although the China-US negotiations have restarted, China’s attitude towards the draft agreement is still very crucial. Whether the two countries can bridge the differences is still a big question mark. Moreover, judging from the recent practice of the Chinese side to release the spirit of struggle, its attitude does not seem to change, and it is even harder. The trade war between the two countries will continue to be strong.
In response, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters at the White House on September 6 that it took the United States decades to reach the point where the United States hoped to reach the Soviet Union.
Regarding the Chinese issue, Kudlow also said that the election of this benchmark is meaningless and the United States is ready for a lasting response. He also stressed that President Trump has made Americans aware of the importance of this issue. “The stakes are so great, we have to do things well. Even if it takes ten years, then why?”
And Trump’s attitude has always been that, without an agreement, he will continue to tax China and get a lot of money.
