WASHINGTON • The United States and China launched a critical round of trade talks yesterday amid deep differences over Washington’s demands for structural economic reforms from Beijing that will make it difficult to reach a deal before a March 2 US deadline to increase tariffs on Chinese goods..
WASHINGTON • The United States and China launched a critical round of trade talks yesterday amid deep differences over Washington’s demands for structural economic reforms from Beijing that will make it difficult to reach a deal before a March 2 US deadline to increase tariffs on Chinese goods.
Cabinet-level officials, led by Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, gathered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House.
During a photo opportunity at the start of the scheduled two days of talks, Mr Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other top Trump administration officials sat silently across a long table from their Chinese counterparts, ignoring a reporter’s questions.
After a few minutes, Mr Lighthizer broke the silence with joking small talk about table positioning and appearing in photographs from the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina last year.
The talks began two days after the US charged Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, with conspiring to violate US sanctions on Iran by doing business through a subsidiary it tried to hide.
