Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross shares Trump’s protectionist views on trade policy
President Donald Trump has sent Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to China, where he arrived on Saturday in the hope of negotiating better trade deals between that country and the United States.
Ross’s goal is to convince China to buy more American goods as well as American energy products, according to Reuters. He is scheduled to have dinner on Saturday with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who will represent the Chinese government as its lead negotiator in this trade dispute with the United States. Wilbur Ross and Liu He are also scheduled to meet again on Sunday, presumably to continue their conversations on matters of trade policy
One of the main issues at stake is the fact that there is a $375 billion trade deficit between the United States and China. In order to address this, the Trump administration has called for China to reduce the deficit by $200 billion annually by 2020 (the final year of Trump’s current term), as well as respect the intellectual property rights of American companies and stop subsidizing the Chinese steel and aluminum industries in ways that have led to overproduction. To achieve this goal, the United States announced earlier this week that it would continue to pursue tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, as well as tighten export control and impose limitations on Chinese investments in this country.
China has responded by threatening its own tariffs on American goods, sparking fears that there could be a trade war.
Yet while Trump could in theory be in a position of strength when it comes to his administration’s negotiations with China — after all, other nations have similar complaints to America’s about Chinese trade practices — he has weakened his hand considerably by announcing earlier this week that he was imposing metal tariffs on American allies like the European Union, Canada and Mexico, according to The New York Times.
