US President Donald Trump’s administration has issued a partial — and qualified — denial to the revelation that it is discussing imposing limits on US investments in Chinese companies and financial markets as China vowed to continue opening its markets to foreign investment.
Bloomberg News on Friday reported that US National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow was leading deliberations inside the White House over what some hawks have labeled a potential “financial decoupling” of the world’s two largest economies.
The options discussed have included forcing a delisting of Chinese firms from US exchanges, imposing limits on investments in Chinese markets by US government pension funds and putting caps on the value of Chinese companies included in indexes managed by US firms, according to people familiar with and involved in the discussions.
In a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg on Saturday, a spokeswoman for US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said there were no current plans to stop Chinese companies from listing on US exchanges.
“The administration is not contemplating blocking Chinese companies from listing shares on US stock exchanges at this time,” US Department of the Treasury spokeswoman Monica Crowley said.
Crowley did not address any of the other options reported and declined to offer any further details of the discussions.
People close to the White House deliberations say they remain preliminary and that no final course of action has been decided on.
They also insist the focus is on protecting US investors from ending up unwittingly with stakes in Chinese companies that do not have the same auditing standards as US listed firms.
At a briefing yesterday in Beijing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said China-US trade and financial cooperation is mutually beneficial.
“Maximum pressure and forced decoupling will surely harm the interests of our enterprises and people, cause instability in financial markets, as well as threaten international trade and global economic growth,” Geng said. “This does not accord with the interests of the international community.”
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