Talks between US and China could hamper trade tensions

Talks between US and China could hamper trade tensions

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US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan leave for the two-day meeting with Chinese counterparts Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi in Anchorage, Alaska, with lots of luggage.

Former President Donald Trump has spent much of his term raising tensions between the two largest economies in the world. He unleashed a bitter trade war that had not yet completely unraveled the two parties. And he has punished some of China’s most prominent technology companies with crippling sanctions, mainly over concerns that it poses a threat to US national security.

According to William Reinsch, a trade expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has been acting president of the National Council on Foreign Trade for 15 years, it is likely that other political disputes will dominate the conversation in Anchorage.

The two countries have recently clashed over a number of issues, including the repression of Beijing against Hong Kong, a former British territory, and allegations of widespread human rights violations in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.

China hopes the Alaska Assembly will disengage from trade policy and eventually lead to a setback in U.S. tariffs, as well as its commitments to buy more U.S. goods. America is not ready to make concessions.

“I do not think it has sunk the limited flexibility that the president has in light of the sharp shift in US public opinion towards China and the strong demands in Congress from both parties for a hard line on China,” he said. Reinsch told CNN Business. “Trade and technology therefore remain issues, but the other issues, especially human rights, are currently higher on the list.”

Washington may have already ensured that geopolitics will be the focal point during the meeting. Earlier this week, the U.S. government approved two dozen Chinese and Hong Kong officials after Beijing further restricted the ability of people in the city to freely choose their leaders. Blinken also criticized China in a meeting with its counterparts in Tokyo on Tuesday, where it accused Beijing of threatening regional stability.

Neither side indicated that they also see Anchorage as a place for meaningful change in their relationship. The Biden government stressed that the summit was “a one-off meeting” which was “very much intended as an initial discussion”. And Beijing said it did not have “high expectations” for the event.

“The contemptuous hope for the meeting reflects domestic politics – on the US side, Biden wants to avoid looking too soft on Beijing – but also the broader state of the relationship,” Eurasia Group analysts wrote in a research note last week. “Neither the US nor China is willing to make concessions that the other one deems necessary to ease the tension.”

Human rights issues, meanwhile, could exacerbate some of the key economic pain in the street.

The competition between America and China in technology and trade will not end because Joe Biden is president
The United States has already expressed concern about Xinjiang in its import restrictions last year. that region – an attempt to prevent forced labor from entering the US market. Beijing has long defended its repression in Xinjiang as necessary to tackle extremism and terrorism. And contrary to accusations that it is forcing people to go there in labor camps, it claims that its facilities are voluntary “training centers” where people have vocational skills, Chinese language and laws.)

“The Biden administration will link human rights issues to exports [and] sales of technology, “said Alex Capri, a research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation and a visiting senior fellow at the National University of Singapore.” Expect to see more export controls and sanctions against Chinese interests. “

Capri and others also say the United States will continue to do what it can to disrupt parts of its economy from China. He pointed to Biden’s recent efforts to review US supply chains – a move widely seen as an attempt to ensure that critical products and supplies are not seen in Beijing.

Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ platform is actually a more coherent version of [Make America Great Again]”when it comes to restoring and surrounding strategic industries,” Capri told CNN Business, pointing to possible attempts to remove China from the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, battery, rare earth and artificial intelligence supply chains as ” just the beginning ‘.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misrepresented Xinjiang’s location in China.

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