In a meeting with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai brought up concerns about China’s state-run economic policies, according to their respective offices. Wang Wentao also voiced opposition to American trade policy and tariffs.
But remarks from the offices of the U.S. commercial Representative and China’s Commerce Ministry both emphasised the importance of maintaining commercial relations between Washington and Beijing.
In a statement issued following the meeting on the fringes of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Detroit, the USTR noted that Ambassador Tai “highlighted the need to address the serious imbalances generated by China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade policy.
She also expressed concern over PRC (People’s Republic of China) moves against American businesses doing business there.
Wang voiced concerns about U.S. trade and economic policies against China, including tariffs on Chinese imports, trade and economic difficulties involving Taiwan, and China’s exclusion from the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), according to a statement from China’s Commerce Ministry.
Tai will host a ministerial gathering of nations participating in the IPEF negotiations on Saturday. These discussions exclude China and are designed to offer a U.S.-centric alternative to its influence. She unveiled the first commercial deals with Taiwan last week. The self-governing island is allegedly part of China.
USTR is conducting a four-year evaluation of the tariffs placed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019 on Chinese imports valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.
Tai has long criticised China’s attempts to control particular businesses through significant state subsidies and claims that these difficulties are still present in the bilateral relationship.
Tai responded that “aspects” of the Biden administration’s response were already visible in U.S. economic policies when asked whether the U.S. would turn to using additional trade tools to address China’s practises, such as a new “Section 301” investigation that could result in more U.S. tariffs.
Following a string of setbacks that increased tensions between the two largest economies in the world, Wang’s meetings with Tai in Detroit and with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in Washington on Thursday marked the first cabinet-level contact between U.S. and Chinese officials in months.
The tone of the Chinese statement was comparable to worries expressed to Raimondo over American trade, investment, and export policies.
At the G20 conference in Indonesia last November, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to communicate more frequently in order to prevent tensions between the two countries from escalating into a new Cold War.
However, there were a number of setbacks to those preparations, beginning with the downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in American coastal waters.
These irritants persisted up until last Sunday, when G7 leaders vowed to oppose China’s “economic coercion” and Beijing retaliated by designating American memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology (MU.O) as a national security concern and prohibiting its sales to significant domestic industries.
