Washington: President Trump says he wants a 'fair' commercial agreement with China, but it is not yet clear when the two parties will break the point dead by tariffs.
Speaking to journalists in Washington on Wednesday, Trump said that conversations with Beijing are ongoing and that both countries could reach an agreement. But the senior US officials did not give clear answers about how or when current rates can be reduced.
Trump told reporters that his country would have a “fair treatment with China,” and added that “everything is active” when asked if Washington was talking to Beijing.
However, how soon the tariffs could “depend on them,” Trump said, referring to Beijing, even when he said he gets “very well” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and hopes they can reach an agreement.
Commercial tensions between the two largest economies in the world have shot themselves as Trump increased taxes on China imports this year, imposing an additional 145 percent rate on many products on the practices that Washington has considered unfair and other problems.
Beijing, in turn, has retaliates with new tariffs of 125 percent over US assets.
Despite the signs that Washington is looking for a fair agreement, the state of discussions remains murky.
When asked if there is a direct contact in the United States with China in commerce, Trump said: “Every day.”
However, earlier on Wednesday, United States Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besent, told journalists that both countries “are not yet” talking when it comes to reducing tariffs.
“I think both parties are waiting to talk to the other,” he said at an event outside the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington.
He added that there is no unilateral offer of Trump to reduce the tasks of Chinese products.
'An embargo'
Besent said that the amazingly high rates that both countries have imposed on the goods of others must decrease before negotiations may occur.
“I do not think that any of the parties believes that the current tariff levels are sustainable, so it would not surprise me if they fell in a mutual way,” he added outside a forum of the Institute of International Finance.
“This is the equivalent of an embargo, and a break between the two countries in commerce does not adapt to anyone's interest,” said Besent, emphasizing that “decallation by both parties is possible.”
But it did not give a deadline about how soon bilateral conversations could take place.
“It is a blessing and a curse that the strongest relationship is on top,” said Besent, referring to Trump's ties with the Chinese counterpart XI. However, with “any decallation, conversations would not begin at the top.”
Although Trump has rapidly implemented acute tariffs in different countries and sectors, he has also introduced certain exemptions, more recently a temporary respite for technological products such as smartphones and chip manufacturing tools.
He could expand the logging, Financial Times reported Wednesday, saying that Trump could exempt the pieces of some cars from some rates on Chinese imports, along with steel and aluminum.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump said he was not considering changes in US cars rates, but pointed out that taxaries in Canada could increase in terms of cars.
Separate, Besent said Wednesday that he did not have a position on whether the president had the authority to say goodbye to the president of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, if he wanted.
He suggested Trump's previous comment that Powell's “termination” could not come quick enough could also refer to the end of the Fed Chief.
Earlier on Wednesday, Besent said in a speech that the economic model that depends on Beijing's export is “unsustainable” and “not only harms China but the entire world.”
He emphasized the concerns of the United States about the commercial imbalances that the Trump administration says it hopes to address through radical tariffs.
But Besent said that “the United States first does not mean America alone.”
He insisted that administration movements are widely a call to a deeper collaboration and mutual respect among commercial partners, while pointing to policy elections from other countries that, according to him, have promoted to the manufacture of the United States and have put their safety at risk.
