Unlock the White House Watch watch newsletter for free
Your guide on what Trump’s second term for Washington, Business and the World means
Beijing and Washington began commercial negotiations with high issues in Geneva on Saturday while the Chinese official media repeated calls to the United States to raise its prices on the country’s exports to show its “sincerity”.
The meeting between Chinese negotiators led by Vice-President He Lifeng and an American team led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent one day after Donald Trump reported its opening up to the reduction of prices on China to defuse their trade war.
“High-level economic and commercial talks between China and the United States began in Geneva,” said the Xinhua state news agency in a brief press release, which should last two days. He did not provide more details on the HE East team. Bessent is accompanied by the Jamieson Greer trade representative in talks.
Late Saturday, a person familiar with the case said that the talks had called for the day and would resume on Sunday.
Trump suggested that the United States could reduce its 80% tariffs on Chinese products by 145%, while calling Beijing to open its markets to American products. But he added that it was in Bessent.
People familiar with the case said it was important not to take Trump literally and that the figure was probably a negotiation tactic.
Washington and Beijing have been committed to tariff measurements from Tit-For-Tat since Trump has placed samples from China in February. Bessent later said that the overall level of prices in the two directions was equivalent to a de facto commercial embargo which was “not sustainable”.
Before the talks, Bessent reduced the expectations of a major economic and commercial agreement. He said the talks were focused on reducing prices in both directions to create a space for longer -term negotiations that would focus on more than the American trade deficit.
The nationalist tabloid of the Chinese Communist Party, the Global Times, repeated Beijing calls on Saturday for the United States to lower the prices to lay the bases of talks.
“The United States is expected to make preparations and take action on issues such as correcting its bad practices and the lifting of unilateral prices,” he said the country’s Ministry of Trade.
A resolution “depends on the question of whether Washington can demonstrate the necessary sincerity in talks,” said the Global Times.
He repeated a Chinese saying that “to denigrate the bell, you need the person who attached the bell” – which means that the person who created a problem is responsible for solving it. However, Trump said he was not willing to unilaterally reduce the prices.
Beijing is also concerned about an American trade agreement with the United Kingdom, the first hit by Washington after imposing the “reciprocal” prices on the partners last month.
As part of the agreement, the United Kingdom has accepted strict American security requirements for its steel and pharmaceutical industries, in what diplomats consider a model that Washington could use China from the strategic supply chains of other countries.
China trade data for April has shown that international trade has remained resilient despite the American rates, largely due to higher expeditions to third countries, in particular some in Southeast Asia which are called conduits for Chinese exports to the United States.
Before accepting the trade negotiations of the weekend, there were several weeks of debate in Beijing on the best way to manage Trump’s requests, some officials opposed to talks before the United States took good faith measures such as the reduction of prices, according to two people informed of the discussions.
One of the people said that some officials were also concerned about the signal he would send to other countries if Beijing had decided to negotiate, believing that this could reduce their determination to keep themselves quickly alongside China to maintain the commercial order led by the WTO.
Chinese officials are the most worried that the United States pushes its allies to form a new trade order without him.
This week, China has sought to make an example of India to promote the United States in its relations, imposing anti-dumping rights up to 166.2% on imports of an Indian pesticide, cypermethrin.
In addition to attacking dumping, the action was aimed at warning other countries not to use China as a negotiation currency in commercial discussions with the United States, said Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with the Chinese state diffuser CCTV CCTV.
He underlined a New Delhi decision to impose a temporary rate of 12% on a steel imported last month, China “the main target”, the same day as JD Vance, American vice-president, visited India.
“Many analysts have stressed that India’s decision should respond to the repression of the United States on Chinese manufacturing industry,” said Yuyuan Tantian.
