MALIPO, China (AFP) - China has full confidence in its ability to manage U.S. trade issues, Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying said on Friday.
“We have no fear,” Hua told a small group of reporters at a middle school in a rural county in southwestern China, adding that the trade policy of the U.S. administration cannot be sustained.
The weekend talks involving top U.S. and Chinese economic and trade officials are widely seen as a first step toward resolving a trade war that has disrupted the global economy. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the U.S. tariffs on Beijing of 145 percent would likely come down.
“We have full confidence,” Hua said during a Beijing-organized trip to Malipo county to showcase China’s efforts to build up rural economies.
“We do not want any kind of war with any country. But we have to face up to the reality. As you can see, people have full confidence in our capability to overcome all the difficulties.”
Trump’s tariffs on many of the United States’ trading partners, including China, are increasingly weighing on a world economy which for decades had benefited from predictable and relatively free trade.
Many economists are calling the Trump tariffs a “demand shock” to the world economy which, by making imports more expensive for American businesses and consumers, will sap activity elsewhere.
“What the United States is doing cannot be sustained,” Hua said. “Ordinary people in the U.S. already feel suffering from the tariff war.”
The U.S. administration will come back to “normal,” she said.
A formidable set of cards that includes granting access to its vast market and an ability to withstand economic pain will allow Beijing to play hardball in upcoming trade talks with the United States in Geneva, analysts say.
Trade between the world’s two largest economies has nearly skidded to a halt since U.S. President Donald Trump slapped China with various rounds of levies that began as retaliation for Beijing’s alleged role in a devastating fentanyl crisis.
With additional measures justified by Trump as efforts to rebalance the trade relationship and prevent the United States from being “ripped off,” tariffs on many Chinese products now reach as high as 145 percent — with cumulative duties on some goods soaring to a staggering 245 percent.
Beijing has responded with 125 percent tariffs on U.S. imports, along with other measures targeting American firms.
Beijing has vowed to stick to its guns and insisted its demand that all U.S. tariffs be lifted remains “unchanged.”
Analysts say, however, China is in no major rush to make a deal.
“Beijing can impose some pain on the United States,” Chong Ja Ian, associate professor of political science at National University of Singapore, told AFP.
China’s core strengths going into the talks are its huge domestic market, as well as “key technologies and control of a significant proportion of processed rare earth minerals,” Chong said.