The US and China sat down at the negotiating table in London yesterday to attempt to preserve a fragile truce on trade, despite simmering tensions.
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were leading the US delegation, US President Donald Trump announced on Friday.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) — who led Beijing’s negotiating team at previous talks with the US last month in Geneva, Switzerland — would head the Chinese team in London, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced at the weekend.
Photo: Reuters
“The meeting should go very well,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday: “We want China and the United States to continue moving forward with the agreement that was struck in Geneva.”
While the British government reiterated that it was not involved in the content of the discussions in any way, a spokesperson said: “We are a nation that champions free trade.”
UK authorities “have always been clear that a trade war is in nobody’s interests, so we welcome these talks,” the spokesperson said.
The talks in London come just a few days after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) finally held their first publicly announced telephone talks since the Republican returned to the White House.
Trump said the call, which took place on Thursday last week, had reached a “very positive conclusion.”
Xi was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying that “correcting the course of the big ship of Sino-US relations requires us to steer well and set the direction.”
The call came after tensions between the world’s two biggest economies soared, with Trump accusing Beijing of contravening a tariff de-escalation deal reached in Geneva in the middle of last month.
“We need China to comply with their side of the deal and so that’s what the trade team will be discussing tomorrow,” Leavitt said on Sunday.
A key issue in the negotiations would be Beijing’s shipments of rare earths — crucial to a range of goods including electric vehicle batteries and which have been a bone of contention for some time.
“Rare earth shipments from China to the US have slowed since President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs in April,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at trading group XTB. “The US wants these shipments to be reinstated, while China wants the US to rethink immigration curbs on students, restrictions on access to advanced technology including microchips, and to make it easier for Chinese tech providers to access US consumers.”
At one point the US hit China with additional levies of 145 percent on its goods as both sides engaged in tit-for-tat escalation. China’s countermeasures on US goods reached 125 percent.
The impact was reflected in the latest official export data released yesterday in Beijing. Exports to the US fell 12.7 percent month-on-month last month, with China shipping US$28.8 billion of goods.
That is down from US$33 billion in April, Chinese General Administration of Customs data showed.
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