The Secretary of State to the Treasury, the deputy prime minister: Washington and Beijing sent this weekend of the maximum weights in Geneva to try to calm the waters in the commercial war launched by Donald Trump whose deleterious effects are felt on the two major world economies. The talks – at the highest level since the clash started with the duties on the return of Donald Trump to the White House – are scheduled for today and tomorrow in the Swiss city on the lake and will see the participation of the US Treasury Secretary Scott Betting of the representative for the US trade Jamieson Greer and of the Chinese deputy prime minister He Lifeng.
The place of the meeting is surrounded by the utmost secrecy
On Friday Donald Trump made a gesture by proposing to lower 80% the punitive rates that he himself imposed on Chinese products. “The president would like to solve the problem with China. As he said, he would like to calm down the situation,” the secretary of trade on Fox News said on Fox News Howard Lutnick.
The gesture remains symbolic, since rates of this level would however be unsustainable for most Chinese exports to the United States. From his return to the White House in January, Trump has transformed customs rates into a political tool. The US president imposed a 145% superet on goods from China, in addition to pre -existing rates.
Beijing, who promised to fight overpays “to the bitter end“, he replied with rates of 125% on American products. Consequently, bilateral trade has practically stopped and the markets have undergone violent upheavals. The talks scheduled in Geneva are therefore” a positive and constructive step towards relaxation “, as said the general manager of the World Organization of Commerce (OMC) Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela on the eve of the interviews. For the Minister of Economy of the country of the country. Host, Guy Parmelin, it is already “a success” that “the two sides talk”.
De-escalation
The Chinese vice -premier seems to get to the talks with an ace on the sleeve. Last Friday, Beijing announced an increase of 8.1% of exports in April, a given four times higher than the analysts’ forecasts, but exports to the United States decreased by almost 18%. If you have to believe the Chinese, it was also the Americans who asked for these discussions. Donald Trump “will not unilaterally lower the rates on China. We also need to see concessions on their part,” he warned his spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.
“I think this is the result that the president hopes, a world of de-Escalation in which we start to trace with each other, and in which we work together on a great agreement,” explained the secretary of the Howard Lutnick trade to the CNBC Thursday.
What result?
“A possible result of the talks in Switzerland would be an agreement to suspend most of them, if not all, the rates imposed this year for the duration of bilateral negotiations,” said Bonnie Glaser, head of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington Think Tank.
Lizzi Lee, an expert in Chinese economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, an organization based in the United States, expects a potential “symbolic and temporary gesture”, which could “loosen tensions, but do not resolve fundamental disagreements”.
Also at the “practical” level things are getting stuck, according to Bill Reinsch, an expert of the center for strategic and international studies. Donald Trump wants to meet his homologous XI Jinping, “reach an agreement with him and then make their subordinates take care of the details”, he told the FP, while the Chinese “want all the issues to be resolved before a meeting” between the two presidents.
Xu Bin, professor at the China Europe International Business School (Ceibs) in Shanghai, does not expect the duties to return to a “reasonable level”: “Even if they go down, they will probably be the half of the half and, again, they will be too high to have a normal trade”.