Top US and Chinese trade negotiators on Thursday haggled over the details of a set of agreements aimed at ending their trade dispute, just one week before a Washington-imposed deadline for a deal expires and triggers higher US tariffs.
The two sides are starting to sketch out an agreement on structural issues, drafting language for six memorandums of understanding on proposed Chinese reforms.
If the two sides fail to reach an agreement by Friday next week, US tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese imports are to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent.
Negotiators have struggled this week to overcome differences on specific language to address tough US demands for structural changes in China’s economy, two sources familiar with the talks said.
The issues include an enforcement mechanism to ensure that China complies with any agreements.
“It’s not surprising that this week has been more challenging,” said an industry source familiar with the talks. “Once you move from putting together outlines to filling out the details, that is where things would naturally become more challenging.”
Chinese officials did not answer questions as they left the US Trade Representative’s office in Washington on Thursday evening after more than nine hours of talks.
The discussions began with a photo opportunity, at which US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (劉鶴) faced each other silently across a table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House.
US President Donald Trump, who has embraced an “America First” policy as part of an effort to rebalance global trade, has said that next week’s deadline could be extended if enough progress is made.
Sources familiar with the negotiations told reporters that the memorandums would cover forced technology transfer and cybertheft, intellectual property rights, services, currency, agriculture and non-tariff barriers to trade.
The two sides remain far apart on demands by Trump’s administration for China to end practices on those issues that led Trump to start levying duties on Chinese imports in the first place.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would need to undertake difficult structural economic reforms to meet US demands.
Washington is offering no real concessions in return, other than to remove the tariff barriers Trump has imposed to force change from China.
One of Trump’s demands that is easier to fix for Beijing is to reduce the trade imbalance between the two nations. The US trade deficit with China reached a record US$382 billion through the first 11 months of last year.
The two sides have reached consensus on how to alleviate the trade imbalances, several Chinese government sources said.
Washington and Beijing are looking at a 10-item list for that, including additional Chinese purchases of agricultural produce, energy and goods such as semiconductors.
US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue called China’s pledges to purchase US agricultural produce “premature.”
“Those proposals are all contingent upon a grand deal,” he said on the sidelines of the US Department of Agriculture’s annual forum in Washington. “The real issue is structural reforms regarding intellectual property, enforceability of those types of provisions.”
The US could quickly recover its lost agricultural markets in China if a deal is struck, he said.
Perdue has overseen US$12 billion in federal aid to US farmers for losses they have sustained because of the trade dispute.
China had all but halted purchases of US soybeans, which were the single biggest US agricultural export, worth about US$12 billion in 2017.
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