Who will blink first in the China-US trade tussle?
Senior officials from Beijing and Washington to meet in Geneva as tariff tensions escalate
One small step for China, one giant leap for common sense. Tentative talks to ease trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are slated for later this week in the Swiss city of Geneva. They promise to be the start of a drawn-out process, peppered with fireworks.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will sit down with China’s Deputy Premier He Lifeng and his team, probably at the weekend.
It will be the first face-to-face meeting between high-level officials of the United States and China since US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs war erupted last month.
Who blinked first is open to debate. But the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing reported that Washington had “expressed a willingness to engage in dialogue.”
“China has decided to engage [in talks], taking into account global expectations, national interests, and calls from American industry and consumers,” a Commerce Ministry spokesperson said today, as reported by the official Xinhua News Agency.
“There is an old Chinese saying: Listen to what is said, and watch what is done … If [Washington] says one thing but then does another, or attempts to use talks as a cover to continue coercion and blackmail, China will never agree,” the spokesperson added.
Meaningful negotiations are a different story.
Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations
Behind the news:
- The Trump administration has slapped eye-watering tariffs of 145% on Chinese imports.
- In response, President Xi Jinping’s regime has targeted US exports with 125% duties.
Between the lines: “My sense is that this will be about de-escalation, not about the big trade deal. We’ve got to de-escalate before we can move forward,” Treasury Secretary Bessent told Fox News television before Beijing released a statement.
Delve deeper: Up to “20 million workers,” or roughly 3% of China’s labor force, risk being swept away by Washington’s sanctions. The threat of a global recession is also looming, according to the United Nations, as reported by the Global Trade Review.
Big picture: “China cannot hold out forever, but it is not desperate either. A tactical climbdown sooner rather than later would serve both sides, but meaningful negotiations are a different story,” Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations told Foreign Affairs.
China Factor comment: What happens next is the trillion-dollar question. But what is not in doubt is that talks will be punctuated by chaos and condemnation.