ZCZC
BCN-11
CHINA-US-ECONOMY-TRADE
China’s former trade negotiator questions tariff strategy
BEIJING, Nov 19, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – China’s former top trade negotiator has
questioned Beijing’s strategy in the trade row with Washington, offering a
rare window into a policy disagreement in the Communist-ruled country.
Long Yongtu, who paved the way for the country’s admission to the World
Trade Organization, suggested the government erred by immediately retaliating
against Washington tariffs by imposing levies on soybeans from the United
States.
“I hope when you start hitting back you’ll avoid hitting agricultural
products,” and leave them for last, Long said he advised before the trade
war’s first tariff volley this summer.
“Instead from the very start we hit their agricultural products and
soybeans,” China’s former chief representative for trade negotiations said at
a a Caixin media business forum on Sunday.
China slapped 25 percent tariffs on American soybeans — its single
largest import from the US — and other products in July immediately after
Donald Trump fired at $50 billion in Chinese imports.
The move was widely seen as an attack on Trump’s agricultural base of
electoral support, and tacitly acknowledged as such by Chinese officials.
“I said from my experience in China-US trade, agricultural products are
very sensitive, soybeans are very sensitive,” Long said.
When China was negotiating its WTO entry, the US wanted to bring politics
into the discussion, said Long.
“But if you talk politics you will never reach a deal,” Long warned,
recommending the world’s top two economic giants engage narrowly on trade and
avoid the larger strategic rivalry to strike a deal.
But Long’s interlocutor on stage, and during the WTO negotiations nearly
two decades ago, former US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky,
cautioned that the gulf between the two powers was expanding.
“China’s economy and economic policies have been on a divergent course
from market economics… accelerating in the last four or five years,”
Barshefsky told the Caixin forum.
The shift to a state-led system is a “fundamental conflict between China
and the United States and other countries Europe, Japan, Australia”, she
said.
“It is difficult to resolve.”
BSS/AFP/HR/1040