中美贸易战：13轮磋商无果 改成“阶段性”方式继续磋；特朗普和刘鹤于1月15日在白宫签署第一阶段经贸协议 (附中英文版本)
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Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump announced Monday that he'll meet face-to-face with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit late next month amid the latest escalation in trade tensions between the two countries.
Trump predicted that his meeting with Xi will likely be "very fruitful" and said he believes China wants to reach a deal, even as he vented about China reneging earlier this month on key portions of the deal being negotiated between the two economic powers.
"We had a deal with China, it was 95% there and then my representatives...they went to China and they were told that things that were fully agreed to, we're not going to get anymore. That's not acceptable," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. "I said, that's good, that's fine, put on the tariffs."
"I love the position we're in," Trump said.
Earlier Monday, China announced tariffs on $60 billion in US exports in retaliation for Trump's moves last week to hike existing tariffs imposed last year on Chinese goods -- and to start the process of adding duties to almost everything else China sends to the US.
Trump's comments came after his top economic adviser spent the weekend trying to defuse the trade war and demonstrate that trade negotiations between the two countries were moving forward. Those attempts to calm markets failed, with stocks falling sharply Monday after the mutual escalation.
The President has sought to spin his decision to increase tariffs on US imports from China as delivering pain to China and benefits to the US, repeatedly suggesting -- falsely -- that China would pay for the US tariff increase. While the tariffs are aimed at delivering economic pain to China, US businesses and consumers will bear the immediate financial cost of the tariff increase.
"There will be nobody left in China to do business with. Very bad for China, very good for USA! But China has taken so advantage of the U.S. for so many years, that they are way ahead (Our Presidents did not do the job)," he wrote in one tweet. "Therefore, China should not retaliate - will only get worse!"
China quickly responded with the announcement that it will be raising tariffs on $60 billion worth of US goods beginning on June 1. That move comes after the Trump administration hiked tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200 billion in Chinese exports last week, while Chinese negotiators were still in Washington, and then proceeded to initiate steps late Friday, after negotiations broke down, to expand tariffs to cover almost everything else China sells to the US.
That list would include consumer goods like smartphones and toys that were left out of earlier tariff rounds, creating a heightened risk of political blowback for Trump. Even the President's chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, has conceded that consumers will likely bear the costs of the fresh tariffs.
"Yes, I don't disagree with that," Kudlow said in an interview on Sunday with Fox News, though he insisted that China will "suffer GDP losses" as a result of a diminished export market and shifting US investments. "Both sides will pay."
In a report to investors this week, Goldman Sachs said "the cost of US tariffs have fallen entirely on US businesses and households" and warned that US GDP would take a hit if the trade war continues to escalate.
Still, Trump on Monday said he is considering imposing tariffs on another $325 billion of Chinese imports.
"Those who think the US has leverage do not fully understand China. China thinks long-term," said Max Baucus, a former senator from Montana and US ambassador to China under President Barack Obama. "To some degree, China feels, 'Oh, well these tariffs will kick in and hurt the American people pretty soon. America is a democracy and their government is going to be forced to respond whereas all of us over in China, we're not a democracy and we can just do what we think we want to do.'"
Trump announced in December that he had made a deal with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a dinner in Buenos Aires, but talks hit a wall last week after China, according to US officials, reneged on key components of the emerging agreement between the two sides.
The breakdown punctured several weeks of steadily rising optimism that the two sides were nearing a final agreement.
The US' top negotiators in trade talks with China -- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer -- met with China's Vice Premier Liu He on Friday, but the talks did little to bring the two sides closer. Instead, officials on both sides signaled that differences between the two sides would ultimately need to be resolved in direct talks between Trump and Xi.
Kudlow said Sunday there is a "strong possibility" Trump will meet with Xi at the G20 economic summit in Japan next month.
Trump, who has often touted his personal relationships with foreign leaders as a way to reach otherwise unlikely deals, addressed Xi directly in one of a series of Monday morning tweets about the trade impasse with China.
"I say openly to President Xi & all of my many friends in China that China will be hurt very badly if you don't make a deal because companies will be forced to leave China for other countries," Trump tweeted. "You had a great deal, almost completed, & you backed out!"
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Washington (CNN) Neither Donald Trump nor Xi Jinping can afford to blink.
A personal duel between two rival presidents could ensure that the escalating trade war across the Pacific may last longer than anyone expected.
The showdown is now no longer just a confrontation between China and the US -- one a rising power challenging the long established dominance of the global economic leader. It's become a test of wills between two of the world's most powerful men, each of whom has political interests that are more likely to deepen the conflict than to quickly ease it.
Both view themselves as strongmen. Both have imposed their power on their domestic governing systems by force of will. Both have the authority to trigger global shock waves -- as they did when markets plunged following Trump's tariff hikes last week and China's multi-billion dollar retaliation on Monday.
Both see the honor of their nation at stake at a crucial moment in the history of US-China relations, as the emerging competition between two great powers becomes sharper than ever.
While Trump has said the two sides were on the verge of a deal last week before China backed out, the gulf in intention between the two giant economies will complicate future talks.
Trump -- lambasting Chinese intellectual property theft and support for state industries -- believes he has to change the global trading system itself because it is a massive ripoff for the United States.
And Trump thinks the strength of the US economy gives him an edge and the ability to pin the blame for the impasse on Xi.
"We are now a much bigger economy than China, and have substantially increased in size since the great 2016 Election. We are the 'piggy bank' that everyone wants to raid and take advantage of. NO MORE!" Trump said Tuesday in an early morning volley of tweets about the trade faceoff.
Xi sees US demands as an infringement on Chinese sovereignty and has an incentive to keep globalization intact since China has profited handsomely from the status quo in a stunning 20-year growth explosion.
The Chinese leader is no keener to climb down than Trump.
"China feels it does not have to give in," Max Baucus, a former US ambassador to China told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Monday.
"Add to that, saving face is a big deal in China. President Xi Jinping does not want to appear to have backed down. I don't think Americans understand that," the former Montana senator said.
While Trump said Monday he will talk to Xi at the G20 summit in Japan in late June -- which is now looming as a massively consequential meeting -- the gaps may be too wide to bridge by then.
Trump's ideology
One reason why the dispute could go on for a while is because Trump seems to sincerely believe he is winning.
Convinced of the primacy of the healthy US economy, willing to shrug off a day's losses on the stock market and wielding his favorite tariff tool, Trump is not at all fazed.
"We're in a very good position, and I think it's only going to get better," Trump said Monday.
Trump is often ideologically supple and could turn on a dime on the dispute. But he's held deep seated beliefs about China's economic threat for decades and has long advocated a protectionist remedy. This is one issue that he's shown that he really does believe in. After all, he seems ready to gamble on the health of the US economy -- his best political asset heading into his 2020 reelection race.
The President's hawkish comments on Monday might have been an attempt to calm tumbling markets. But they also entrenched a position from which it will be hard to abandon without being embarrassed.
For now at least, before damage to the economy and consumer budgets from the deepening trade war becomes obvious, Trump may believe he will prosper politically from standing up to China.
And after accusing Beijing of "raping" US workers in his 2016 campaign, he will want to make good on his promises before 2020.
Trump is also using the China confrontation to emphasize his contrast with former Vice President Joe Biden, the apparent 2020 Democratic front-runner.
Biden complained Monday that Trump was approaching the trade spat all wrong by showing "a lot of bravado, no action."
The President however has already charged that Biden is too weak to take on Xi -- and clearly enjoys the contrast.
"China is DREAMING that Sleepy Joe Biden, or any of the others, gets elected in 2020. They LOVE ripping off America!" Trump tweeted over the weekend.
Trump's big gamble
Trump's foreign policy bets are often motivated by a desire to shore up his domestic standing. And CNN recently reported that Trump is desperate to deliver on his self-image as a master deal maker, another reason it will be tough for him to fold.
The big political risk for the President is that a prolonged trade war of attrition begins to erode US growth, devalues 401Ks in a market correction and tarnishes the economic feel good factor and undermines Trump's boasts of a new era of prosperity.
Voters could tire of paying an effective sales tax on goods like iPhones, toys and foodstuffs, despite Trump's assurance that China and not US consumers foot the bill for tariffs.
US exporters will take a hit from China's tariffs and US manufacturing will also suffer.
Rick Helfenbein, CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, said his industry was "beyond freaked."
"(We are) sitting around feeling like we have just bought tickets for the second sailing of The Titanic, the only difference now is we know exactly where the icebergs are," Helfenbein said on CNN.
The pain of farmers already suffering from Chinese retaliatory tariffs -- especially those in the swing state Midwest -- could also deliver Trump a 2020 shock.
Punishing Beijing could also have other spillover effects. If China is slowed, other economies, including US export markets in Asia and Europe, could suffer and hurt US jobs and prosperity.
"If we get the full throttle of all tariffs it does risk a recession," Diane Swonk, chief economist of Grant Thornton, told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Monday.
Such a doom-laden scenario is one reason why some analysts still bet Trump will close a deal after a period of posturing.
He has, after all, frequently escalated a crisis, then stepped back -- while declaring incremental changes to an existing agreement as a massive victory for the United States.
The scenario eventually eased the crisis over the renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement and offers a blueprint for a deal at the G20 should Trump's political calculation over the China trade war change.
Xi's choice
The confrontation has already revealed a truth that reflects an important geopolitical evolution: Beijing is not afraid of the United States.
Trump spent the weekend warning China on Twitter that it would be "hurt very badly" if it didn't do a deal.
By Monday morning, he had his answer when Beijing announced plans to raise tariffs on $60 billion in US goods.
Like Trump, Xi is not immune to political pressures.
Although he is the most dominant Chinese leader in decades, he cannot completely ignore complicated internal Communist Party dynamics. Chinese leaders are always wary of any changes to social conditions -- that could be brought on by a slowing economy -- that could cause public resentment and translate into political activity.
China is also sensitive to its own experience under colonialism and proud of its rise as a key regional power and global player. So there is no circumstance under which Xi could allow himself to be seen as bowing to bullying from any Western leader, let alone an American president as combative as Trump.
The importance of Chinese pride in the dispute was reflected in an article in the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece on Monday. The paper accused the US of misjudging China's "strength, capability and willpower" and of taking a "risky and impetuous decision."
Baucus said that Americans underestimated China's size, power and leverage. He also said that Beijing was playing a far longer game than Washington and, with the leadership's iron grip on dissent, could afford to absorb the painful side effects of a trade war.
"I think those who think the US (has) leverage do not really fully understand China. China thinks long term. China is an authoritarian government. Their party controls everything," he said.
Both Xi and Trump know the other has much to lose. The question now is the age-old diplomatic conundrum: Can they forge an outcome that gives both the option to declare victory?
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May 14, 2019, 11:29 AM EDT
By Martha C. White
President Donald Trump defended his trade policies on Tuesday, attempting to calm fears that an economically devastating trade war with China could be on the horizon.
“We can make a deal with China tomorrow, before their companies start leaving so as not to lose USA business, but the last time we were close they wanted to renegotiate the deal. No way! We are in a much better position now than any deal we could have made,” he tweeted early Tuesday.
The market appeared somewhat assuaged by his assertion that a trade deal with China could still materialize, rebounding somewhat Tuesday morning after all three major indices ended Monday down significantly.
International trade experts say the reality is that the two sides appear to have fundamentally different priorities, which could make reaching an accord difficult — especially with heated rhetoric on both sides. “For this negotiation to actually have an end, both sides are going to have to make concessions,” said Monica DeBolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. But at the moment, it isn’t clear that either side has a path forward to do so.
Although Trump has made much of market access for U.S. products, especially agricultural goods, the focus of corporate America has always been on more fundamental sticking points surrounding intellectual property rights and protectionist Chinese financial and regulatory policies that benefit domestic industries at the expense of American companies.
“We understand that the differences between the two governments still relate to how changes will be made to China’s laws and regulations on a variety of issues, and enforcement,” said Doug Barry, spokesman for the U.S.-China Business Council. “China is outside the world norm on all of these issues and China’s policies hurt all of its trading partners.”
This is a conclusion that lawmakers have more or less embraced across party lines, but a resolution remains elusive. Multilateral enforcement strategies that could have exerted robust pressure on Beijing were built into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but in rejecting the accord, the Trump administration threw out one of its most promising levers for influencing Chinese policymaking.
“American firms want to do business in China, but there’s an enormous difficulty doing business there, and this trade war is about trying to get China to be a more compliant member of the World Trade Organization,” said David Lindauer, an economics professor at Wellesley College. “This trade war is really about creating a system where American firms can do business in China without all sorts of fears. Protection of IP is high on the list. The Chinese are notorious for producing counterfeit goods, reverse-engineering or requiring technology transfers,” he said. “There’s a great deal of corporate espionage in China [which] appears to be state-sponsored, and the Americans would like to see this curtailed and those who violate the system punished.”
But the United States might have to adjust its expectations, or dig in for a protracted fight, DeBolle said. “At the moment, the U.S. wants China to do a lot… particularly on intellectual property,” she said. “The issue here is for China, this is all about their long term strategy and their long term development goals,” such as its Made in China 2025 initiative, which emphasizes high-tech manufacturing.
How long this all could take to resolve is anyone’s guess. China has more at stake economically, since exports comprise a greater share of its economy, but there are political considerations in the U.S. that could complicate negotiations.
Strategies that could have pressured Beijing were built into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the Trump administration threw out one of the most promising levers for influencing Chinese policymaking.
“As far as a timetable on all this… I don’t believe it’s going to take that long,” said Dom Catrambone, CEO of Whitford Asset Management. He pointed to Trump’s suggestion that he could meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G-20 Summit in June and China’s target date of June 1 to implement retaliatory tariffs. “If you think about the amount of time it takes product to get from China to here… they all know they have a couple weeks to figure something out,” he said. “I think there will be some type of resolution within weeks."
Other experts are less optimistic. “A lot of this right now is Trump and 2020 and his bid for reelection and his sense of wanting to have the rhetoric of ‘I was tough on China.’ I don’t see the U.S. backing down either, which means this could last a while,” DeBolle said. “That could become politically complicated for Trump very, very quickly.”
If Monday’s rout in equities signals the start of a prolonged crisis of confidence, Trump could give China what it wants to further his political ambitions. “President Trump 100 percent is going to see how far he can take it, but he won’t, in my opinion, let the economy be hurt because one of the only ways President Trump keeps his seat in the next election is if the economy’s doing really well,” Catrambone said.
Meanwhile, as the recent market volatility indicates, the current and future costs are piling up. Goldman Sachs analysts described higher prices as being borne “entirely” by American households and companies in a recent note, and Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Wilson warned that a wholesale escalation of tariffs on all Chinese goods imported by the U.S. could trigger a recession. Even Trump’s National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow conceded “both sides will suffer on this,” in a Sunday interview.
“There’s no question. As in any war, both sides are being hurt by this. American consumers are being hurt as prices go up. American consumers are bearing the costs of the tariffs,” Lindauer said. “I think the U.S. administration is going to feel under tremendous pressure for a resolution,” he told NBC News.
“In trade wars, it’s very often a game of chicken and who will blink first," he said.
