WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said that US tariffs on Chinese imports could remain in place for a “substantial period,” dampening hopes that a new trade agreement would see them lifted soon.
Top American trade negotiators are due to travel to Beijing next week for a fresh round of talks.
And US officials said this month they were in the final stages of negotiations on resolving the eight-month trade war with China but neither country has predicted a successful outcome.
Washington and Beijing are battling over the final shape of an agreement that both sides have said they would like to reach, with American officials demanding profound changes to Chinese industrial policy.
“We are talking about leaving them for a substantial period of time,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We have to make sure that if we do the deal with China, that China lives by the deal.”
Trump also said the trade talks were “coming along nicely.”
But American officials have insisted that any agreement have teeth — including the ability to impose tariffs unilaterally should China begin backsliding on any commitments to end alleged unfair trade practices.
Over the last eight months, the United States and China have slapped tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way goods trade, weighing on the manufacturing sectors in both countries.
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On Friday, China’s rubber-stamp parliament approved a foreign investment law to strengthen protections for intellectual property — a central US grievance — but critics said the bill was rammed through without sufficient time for input from businesses.
China has expressed willingness to increase purchases of American commodities such as energy and soybeans but analysts say they will be reluctant to accede to American demands that could weaken the communist party’s hold on power — such as fully exposing state enterprises to market forces.
Trump initially said he expected to seal any final bargain at a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month but that expectation has faded as momentum in the talks has slowed.
Despite Trump’s trade wars, the US trade deficit with China last year hit a fresh all-time record, as avid US consumers drew in foreign-made goods while weakened US sales of agricultural commodities weighed on American exports.
Wall Street shuddered at the news, with the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.7 percent on the day toward 1730 GMT, with markets also heavily focused on the outcome of the latest policy meeting of the Federal Reserve.
AFP
