DETROIT, MICHIGAN: United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting on Friday with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who objected to United States tariffs and trade policies, their offices said.
According to Voice of America (VoA), statements from the United States Trade Representative’s office and China’s Commerce Ministry emphasised the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain the link on trade.
“Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, nonmarket approach to the economy and trade policy,” USTR said at the meeting on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Detroit.
“She raised concerns about the People’s Republic of China’s actions against United States companies operating there,” the statement said.
China’s Commerce Ministry said Wang raised complaints about U.S. economic and trade policies toward China, including United States tariffs on Chinese goods, economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, and the United States-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) that excludes China.
On Saturday, Tai would hold the ministerial meeting of countries in the IPEF talks, which exclude China and aim to provide a United States-centered alternative to its influence. The previous week, she announced the first trade agreements with Taiwan. China claims the self-governed island as its territory.
USTR is conducting a four-year review of United States tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports, imposed in 2018 and 2019 by ex-President Donald Trump.
Tai has long objected to China’s attempts to dominate specific industries using huge state subsidies and said such problems continue to come up in the ties.
Asked during the press conference whether the United States would resort to using further trade tools to address China’s practices, such as the new “Section 301” investigation could lead to more United States tariffs, Tai said “aspects” of the President Biden administration’s response were already evident in United States economic policies.
Tai said, “The benefit of sitting down and conversing with interlocutors from Beijing is so that we can understand each other well and understand how we’re experiencing the impacts that we’ve on each other’s economies.”
