Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (劉鶴) is to visit the US this week for trade talks, in a sign its leadership is battling to keep negotiations on track after US President Donald Trump ratcheted up pressure with plans to raise tariffs on Chinese goods on Friday.
Liu is to travel to the US for talks from tomorrow to Friday at the invitation of US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, according to a statement on the Chinese Ministry of Commerce Web site.
On Monday, Chinese authorities were said to be considering a delay to the trip, according to people familiar with the plans.
The trade talks were cast into doubt after Trump’s surprise announcement over Twitter on Sunday that he planned to raise tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent because talks were moving too slowly.
The US president said he might also impose duties “shortly” on US$325 billion of Chinese goods that are not currently covered, a move that would hit virtually all imports from the Asian nation.
“The fact that China sends a delegation to the US shows it is still willing to solve the dispute by negotiations regardless of what the US is saying,” said Lu Xiang (呂祥) at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
“If the Trump administration follows through with the tariffs threats on Friday, I think it means the talks fall apart. We then need to be prepared for worse than worst,” Lu said.
The Trump administration plans to increase duties on Chinese imports at 12:01am on Friday, Lighthizer said on Monday.
“We felt we were on track to get somewhere. Over the course of last week we have seen an erosion of commitments by China. That in our view is unacceptable,” he said, adding that significant issues remain unresolved, including whether tariffs would remain in place.
Lighthizer and Mnuchin told reporters that the Chinese backsliding became apparent during their visit to Beijing last week, but that they had been reassured by their Chinese interlocutors that everything would turn out.
That changed over the weekend, when China sent through a new draft of an agreement that included them pulling back on language in the text on a number of issues, which had the “potential to change the deal very dramatically,” Mnuchin said on Monday.
At that stage about 90 percent of the pact had been finalized, he said and the Chinese wanted to reopen areas that had already been negotiated.
“We are not willing to go back on documents that have been negotiated in the past,” he said.
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