U.S. trade chief to engage with China on trade-deal shortfalls
BNN Bloomberg
The Biden administration will directly engage with Beijing in the coming days to enforce commitments in their trade deal and start a new process to exclude certain products from U.S. tariffs in an effort to help American workers and businesses, senior administration officials said.
The Biden administration will directly engage with Beijing in the coming days to enforce commitments in their trade deal and start a new process to exclude certain products from U.S. tariffs in an effort to help American workers and businesses, senior administration officials said.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai is set to speak to Chinese Vice Premier Liu He soon, in what will be the first meeting where she will mainly stress China’s shortfalls in the agreement struck under former President Donald Trump. Tai is scheduled to lay out the issues Monday morning in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“I am committed to working through the many challenges ahead of us in this bilateral process in order to deliver meaningful results,” Tai will say, according to excerpts from her speech. “But above all else, we must defend – to the hilt – our economic interests.”
While the Biden administration won’t take any tools off the table when dealing with Beijing, a senior administration official stressed that the U.S. doesn’t intend to escalate the trade tensions. The official acknowledged that China may not change its practices and therefore the U.S. needs a strategy that takes that into account.
Tai’s speech will focus on the Biden administration’s approach to the U.S.-China trade relationship and comes after months of internal reviews and deliberations on how to deal with Beijing’s economic practices.
