US President Donald Trump yesterday ripped into China via Twitter after US negotiators arrived in Shanghai to resurrect talks aimed at ending a year-long trade war between the world’s two top economies.
“My team is negotiating with them now, but they always change the deal in the end to their benefit,” Trump said on Twitter.
Trump had accused China of reneging on its commitments before previous talks broke down in May.
This time, the US leader said that Beijing was supposed to start buying US agricultural products, but it has shown “no signs that they are doing so.”
“That is the problem with China, they just don’t come through,” he said.
Washington and Beijing have so far hit each other with punitive tariffs covering more than US$360 billion in two-way trade in a tense standoff centered on demands for China to curb the alleged theft of US technology and provide a level playing field to US companies.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin did not talk to reporters after arriving in the Chinese financial hub yesterday.
A motorcade believed to be carrying the US officials later headed to the city’s famous Peace Hotel, where they were expected to meet Chinese officials for dinner.
The US officials are scheduled to hold formal talks with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (劉鶴) today.
Trump’s Twitter tirade will reinforce already low expectations that this week’s negotiations will lead to a major breakthrough.
Trump last week said that he believed Beijing was hoping to delay a deal until after the US presidential election in November next year, and the Republican yesterday said that China could wait to see if a Democratic opponent wins the vote and “continue to ripoff the USA.”
“The problem with them waiting, however, is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now ... or no deal at all,” Trump said on Twitter. “We have all the cards, our past leaders never got it!”
Days before the Shanghai meeting, Trump threatened to pull recognition of China’s developing nation status at the WTO — prompting an irritable reply from Beijing about the “arrogance and selfishness” of the US.
The US leader has also angered Beijing by claiming that China’s slowing economy is forcing it to make a trade deal and blacklisting telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co (華為) over national security concerns.
In a commentary yesterday, Xinhua news agency admitted that relations were “strained” and called for the US to “treat China with due respect if it wants a trade deal,” while the China Daily said in an editorial that “the US should give its go-to tactic of maximum pressure a couple of days off as it has proven ineffective against China.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained