Roving Periscope: Trump insists tariff talks on; but China denies it!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It is becoming queerer by the day. While China has declared it will not have any tariff talks with the US until the latter withdraws the unilaterally imposed import duty, President Donald Trump insists that talks for a deal are in progress!
Trump, his flip-flops and all, claimed his administration was talking with China on trade. “They had a meeting this morning,” he said on Thursday. His comments came after a bilateral meeting with Jonas Gahr Støre, the Prime Minister of Norway.
Pressed on which administration officials were involved in discussions, Trump said “it doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.”
The exchange exposed the ongoing disconnect between Washington and Beijing, as President Xi Jinping’s government maintains a defiant stance despite Trump’s recent suggestion he could lower tariffs on China.
Earlier, Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong, on Thursday at a regular briefing in Beijing, dismissed speculation that progress has been made in bilateral communications, saying “any reports on development in talks are groundless,” and urging the US to “show sincerity” if it wants to make a deal.
“The US should respond to rational voices in the international community and within its own borders and thoroughly remove all unilateral tariffs imposed on China, if it really wants to solve the problem,” he said.
These remarks show that the US President’s fresh comments that he could lower tariffs on China– 145 percent for most goods, and even 245 percent for some — will not be enough to de-escalate tensions. Trump said on Wednesday that “everything’s active” when asked if he was engaging with China and that Beijing was “going to do fine” once talks had settled.
Reports said Trump has even tried to get his Chinese counterpart on the phone multiple times since he returned to office on January 20, but an adamant Xi Jinping has, so far, resisted. Beijing wants to see a number of steps from Washington before it will agree to trade negotiations, including showing more respect and naming a point person for the dialogue, the media reported.
Other Chinese ‘conditions’ include a more consistent US position and a willingness to address China’s concerns around American sanctions and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing has vowed to claim someday, by force if necessary.
Trump shifted his tone yet again on Thursday, criticising Beijing for refusing to take deliveries of Boeing Co. jets and for its role in the trade of illegal fentanyl. The US imposed 20 percent tariffs on Chinese imports tied to fentanyl before slapping them with an additional 125 percent duty.
“Boeing should default China for not taking the beautifully finished planes that China committed to purchase,” Trump posted on social media. “And, by the way, Fentanyl continues to pour into our country from China, through Mexico and Canada, killing hundreds of thousands of our people, and it better stop, NOW!”
China has responded to Trump’s volatile tariff moves with caution, with Beijing calling the high levels of levies “meaningless.” Beijing also warned other countries against striking deals with the US that could hurt its interests.
Highlighting how the strain in trade ties is spilling into other areas of the relationship, China’s Defense Ministry on Thursday blamed the “biased” view of “some individuals in the US” for hindering engagement between the Chinese and US militaries.
The remarks from China’s commerce and defense ministries came hours after Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China, warned of the threat ongoing frictions posed to trust in the global economic system.
His remarks came during Chinese officials’ first trip to the US since Trump unleashed his biggest tariffs yet. “All parties should strengthen cooperation and make efforts to prevent the global economy from sliding into a track of ‘high friction, low trust,’” Pan said at a Group of 20 meeting in Washington on Wednesday.
The events are expected to provide the first opportunity for Chinese economic officials to meet with Trump’s team in person since he drastically hiked tariffs on Chinese imports earlier this month, before any formal negotiations to cool trade tensions.
However, neither side has announced any bilateral meetings despite Trump’s move to soften his tone on tariffs that are expected to dent growth of the world’s second-largest economy.
There are “no winners in trade wars” and China will remain open to the outside world and firmly support free trade and the multilateral trading system, Pan said, according to the report.
