A high-powered US delegation arrived in Beijing on Thursday for talks with Chinese officials on defusing tensions that are propelling the world’s two largest economies toward a trade war.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is leading the group, which includes Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative Robert lighthizer. liu He, President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, was heading the Chinese side in the talks, which analysts say appear unlikely to yield a breakthrough given the two sides’ intensifying rivalry in strategic technologies.
President Donald Trump said he expected relations with Beijing to stay on an even keel.
“Our great financial team is in China trying to negotiate a level playing field on trade!” he said on Twitter late Wednesday. “I look forward to being with President Xi in the not too distant future. We will always have a good (great) relationship!”
Trump is seeking to cut the chronic U.S. trade deficit by $100 billion and gain concessions over policies that foreign companies say force them to share technology with Chinese partners in order to gain market access.
His administration has threatened to impose new tariffs on roughly $150 billion in Chinese goods — prompting China to announce its own tariffs on US goods.
The dispute has deepened as China stepped up efforts to overtake western industry leaders in advanced technologies, especially for semiconductors, the silicon brains required to run smartphones, connected cars, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.