Daily Management Review

US-China Trade Talks Start To Pave Way For High Level Talks Next Month


09/20/2019




US-China Trade Talks Start To Pave Way For High Level Talks Next Month
After a hiatus of almost two months, deputy trade representatives of the United States and China kicked off a fresh round of face to face negotiations on trade in Washington in their effort to bring an end to the ongoing trade war between the two largest economies of the world and try and agree on a trade deal.
 
Representatives of the two countries are meeting to prepare a background for a meeting between trade representatives of the two countries scheduled for the beginning of October. The trade war has seen both countries imposing import tariffs on each other’s goods worth billions of dollars.
 
The meeting was held at the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office near the White House wherein the US t4eam was led by Deputy USTR Jeffrey Gerrish and the Chinese Vice Finance Minister Liao Min who had come along with a delegation of about 30 Chinese officials.
 
Analysts believe that the negotiations will primarily focus on issues related to agriculture which would include demands being made by the US that China should increase purchases of American soybeans and other farm commodities in a substantial manner, claimed reports.
 
According to reports, two of the three negotiating sessions in the talks would be completely dedicated to agricultural issues and one would be focused on the strengthening of intellectual property protection measures by China as well as on the issue of forced transfer of technology to domestic Chinese companies form American firms.
 
“Sessions on agriculture will get a disproportionate amount of air time,” said reports quoting sources. The reports further claimed that one of these sessions will also include discussions on the demand of the US President Donald Trump that China should exporting of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to the United States.
 
Trump also is eager to see that China opens up its market more for the US agriculture sector which is a crucial political constituency for Trump and one that has been hit by the trade war and the imposing of tariffs by China on key US agricultural products such as soybeans.
 
It was not very clear what about was desired by China, said US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in an interview on Fox Business Network before the beginning of the talks, and added that “we will find out very, very shortly in the next couple of weeks.”
 
“What we need is to correct the big imbalances, not just the current trade deficit,” Ross said. “It’s more complicated than just buying a few more soybeans,” he said.
 
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue made a surprising announcement to reporters saying that some of the farming regions of the US would be visited by some members of the Chinese delegation that have chosen to stay back in the country after the completion of the two day trade negotiations.
 
“They want to see the production of agriculture. I think they want to build goodwill,” Perdue said.
 
(Source:www.reuters.com)