Breakthrough In Tariff War: US, China Agree On Framework To Resolve Trade Disputes

 

London : Senior U.S. and Chinese negotiators have agreed on a framework to get their trade negotiations back on track after a series of disputes that threatened to derail them, both sides have said. The announcement came at the end of two days of talks in the British capital that wrapped up late Tuesday.

 

The meetings appeared to focus on finding a way to resolve disputes over mineral and technology exports that had shaken a fragile truce on trade reached in Geneva last month. It’s not clear whether any progress was made on the more fundamental differences over China’s sizeable trade surplus with the United States. “First we had to get sort of the negativity out and now we can go forward,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters after the meetings. Asian stock markets rose Wednesday after the agreement was announced.

 

The talks followed a phone call between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week to try to calm the waters. Li Chenggang, a vice minister of commerce and China’s international trade representative, said the two sides had agreed in principle on a framework for implementing the consensus reached on the phone call and at the talks on Geneva, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Further details, including any plans for a potential next round of talks, were not immediately available. Li and Wang Wentao, China’s commerce minister, were part of the delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng. They met with Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at Lancaster House, a 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace.

 

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator, said the disputes had frittered away 30 of the 90 days the two sides have to try to resolve their disputes. They agreed in Geneva to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that sparked fears of recession. The World Bank, citing a rise in trade barriers, cut its projections Tuesday for U.S. and global economic growth this year. “The U.S. and China lost valuable time in restoring their Geneva agreements,” said Cutler, now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Now, only sixty days remain to address issues of concern, including unfair trade practices, excess capacity, transshipment and fentanyl.”

 

Since the Geneva talks, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, visas for Chinese students at American universities and rare earth minerals that are vital to carmakers and other industries. China, the world's biggest producer of rare earths, has signaled it may speed up the issuing of export licenses for the elements. Beijing, in turn, wants the U.S. to lift restrictions on Chinese access to the technology used to make advanced semiconductors. Lutnick said that resolving the rare earths issue is a fundamental part of the agreed-upon framework, and that the U.S. will remove measures it had imposed in response. He did not specify which measures. “When they approve the licenses, then you should expect that our export implementation will come down as well,” he said. Cutler said it would be unprecedented for the U.S. to negotiate on its export controls, which she described as an irritant that China has been raising for nearly 20 years.

 

“By doing so, the U.S. has opened a door for China to insist on adding export controls to future negotiating agendas,” she said. In Washington, a federal appeals court agreed Tuesday to let the government keep collecting tariffs that Trump has imposed not just on China but also on other countries worldwide while the administration appeals a ruling against his signature trade policy. Trump said earlier that he wants to “open up China,” the world’s dominant manufacturer, to U.S. products. “If we don’t open up China, maybe we won’t do anything,” Trump said at the White House. “But we want to open up China.”