Containers are seen at a logistics center near Tianjin Port, in northern China, May 16, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee
May 31, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump are likely to find it “difficult” to make major progress toward ending their countries’ trade war when they meet at a G20 summit in Japan in June, a former Chinese central bank chief said on Friday.
Trade tensions between Washington and Beijing escalated sharply earlier this month after the Trump administration accused China of having “reneged” on its previous promises to make structural changes to its economic practices.
Washington later slapped additional tariffs of up to 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to retaliate.
Trump has said he is planning on meeting Xi during the G20 summit, set for June 28-29 in Osaka, though China has not formally confirmed this.
Dai Xianglong, who headed the People’s Bank of China from 1995-2002 and remains an influential figure in China, told a seminar in Beijing that China-U.S. trade friction was a long-term issue.
China has approached the trade talks with the principles of equality and cooperation, whereas the U.S. approach has been “bullying and America First”, Dai said.
“It’s hard to reconcile these,” he added.
“I expect that at next month’s meeting of the leaders in Japan it will be difficult to achieve major progress.”
Dai added that the current depreciation of the Chinese yuan was a short-term market reaction to the trade war.
China is able to keep its stock market above 3,000 points in the future, he also said.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu, Cheng Leng, Yilei Sun and Dominique Patton; Writing by Ryan Woo and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait & Simon Cameron-Moore)
