China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle.
Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation.
Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit.
Photo: EPA
In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent had “candid, in-depth and constructive exchanges” during a Saturday morning call, and that both sides agreed to hold a new round of trade talks “as soon as possible.”
On social media, Bessent described the call as “frank and detailed,” and said they would meet “in-person next week to continue our discussions.”
Bessent previously said China was seeking to harm the rest of the world by tightening restrictions on rare earths, which are critical to everything from smartphones to guided missiles.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also participated in the call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said.
Hours before the call, Fox News released excerpts of an interview with Trump in which he said he would meet Xi at the APEC summit after all.
Trump told the outlet that the 100 percent tariff on goods from China was not sustainable.
“It’s not sustainable, but that’s what the number is... They forced me to do that,” he said.
The high-level video call came as Washington worked to rally the G7 finance ministers in response to the latest Chinese export controls.
For now, the G7 ministers have agreed to coordinate a short-term response and diversify suppliers, the EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters in Washington.
Speaking after the grouping met this week, Dombrovskis said that the vast majority of rare earth supplies come from China, meaning that diversification could take years.
“We agreed, both bilaterally with the US and at the G7 level, to coordinate our approach,” he said on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s fall meetings.
Countries would also exchange information on their contacts with Chinese counterparts as they work out short-term solutions, he added.
German Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil told journalists he hopes that Trump and Xi’s meeting can help to resolve much of the US-China trade conflict.
“We have made it clear within the G7 that we do not agree with China’s approach,” he added, referring to the group of the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva also expressed hope on Friday for an agreement between the countries to cool tensions.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
RSS