During the G20 talks, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a consensus not to increase trade tariffs and not to introduce new ones from 1 January 2019. Can they now move from a temporary truce in a trade war to the resumption of normal relations?
The standstill agreement on the introduction of higher tariffs will last 90 days and this time will be used for bilateral negotiations. China has agreed to buy US agricultural and industrial products ‘in very substantial quantities’.
Exact numbers have not been specified So far, only the overall framework of the arrangements is known — in fact, it was this goal that was set at the meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping.
The question of the current consensus should not overshadow another more fundamental issue — how much the United States is prepared to accept China’s growth, and whether they will continue to rely on containing China, Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University, Andrei Karneev said to Sputnik.
For the time being, both sides call themselves winners but it is clear that no one intends to seriously concede.
‘Left out of the context are still the issues of Chinese industrial policy and the claims of the American side about the theft of technologies. Highly likely, this is where it will be the most difficult point to reach a compromise. Meanwhile, there is no certainty about the access of US companies to the Chinese market. Apparently, China will resolve this matter gradually and only in response to the relevant American steps concerning a wide range of issues: from lifting restrictions on the activities of Chinese investors in the US to purely political issues, for example, related to Washington’s policy on Taiwan’, the expert noted.
One more expert Mei Xinyu, a Chinese expert at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce of China, shared his views on the truce with Sputnik, stressing that it was really a temporary one, an attempt to prevent the emergence of a ‘New Cold War’ between the two countries.
