Earlier this week, Trump sent a delegation to Beijing to negotiate on trade. Talks ended on Friday on a negative note. The parties were unable to reach a deal, and no date was set for any future talks.
"Both sides recognize there are still big differences on some issues and that they need to continue to step up their work to make progress," according to a statement released by the official Xinhua state news agency. "The two sides exchanged views on expanding U.S. exports to China, trade in services, bilateral investment, protection of intellectual property rights, resolution of tariffs and non-tariff measures."
Chinese officials and influential advisers laid out the Chinese government's position in detail during a three-day seminar that ended in Beijing late on Monday morning. Important stakeholders at the seminar gave an overview of China's economic policies, including an in-depth review of the country's trade policy, to make sure China's stance would be known overseas.
Most notably, Beijing officials did not plan to discuss the two biggest requests that the Trump administration had made over the past several months. Those included a mandatory $100 billion cut in America's $375 billion annual trade deficit with China and curbs on Beijing's $300 billion plan to bankroll the country's industrial upgrade into advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, semiconductors, electric cars, and commercial aircraft. Experts speculate that Beijing did not address these requests because its economy has become robust enough to stand up to the United States.
The tariffs could hurt bilateral trade in coming months, as both U.S. and Chinese buyers will alter their behavior to avoid the tariffs. China may already be downsizing its soybean imports from the U.S.
"Whatever they're buying is non-US," said Soren Schroder, CEO of agricultural giant Bunge Limited. "They're buying beans in Canada, in Brazil, mostly Brazil, but very deliberately not buying anything from the U.S.," Schroder said in an interview with Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
The Chinese are banking on Trump's background as a businessman, which to them implies that at some point he will agree to a deal. Seminar participants also reaffirmed previous Chinese trade policy offers to further open the country's financial and automotive sectors, though not in ways that would impact China's industrial modernization program, called Made in China 2025. They also suggested that China would be willing to tighten its intellectual property rules so as to foster innovation within China and protect foreign technologies from counterfeiting and other illegal copying.
"I don't expect a comprehensive deal whatsoever," said Ruan Zongze, the executive vice president of the China Institute of International Studies, the policy research arm of China's Foreign Ministry. "I think there is a lot of game playing here."
Despite the huge U.S. trade deficit, Chinese companies are struggling to overtake western industry leaders in advanced technologies for semiconductors, the silicon brains required to run smartphones, connected cars, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Analysts say Beijing is unlikely to cede any ground on policies meant to help close that gap.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/business/china-trump-trade-talks.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
- https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/critical-us-china-trade-talks-end-in-beijing/articleshow/64039864.cms
- http://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/the-latest-us-officials-arrive-in-beijing-for-trade-talks/1156643599