'Strategic Patience' Turns to Exasperation at Lagging US-China Trade Talks

The U.S. business community cheered the appointment of Katherine Tai as U.S. trade representative in the early months of the Biden administration, seeing her selection as a signal that the president wanted to get serious about addressing the country's fractured trading relationship with China. But months in, with no signal from the administration about reopening talks with China, patience among some is wearing thin.  

"There's clearly a frustration at that inability to get back to having a steadier, more normal trading relationship with China," said Jake Colvin, vice president for global trade issues at the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington.   What began as an exercise in "strategic patience," as the business community waited for the White House and various agencies to come together on a strategy for approaching China, has become a state of exasperation with the lack of communication, he said.   "I think that the biggest frustration for the business community is that we don't see a road map that gets to that steadier economic relationship," he said.