Top Chinese and US negotiators spoke on Tuesday and agreed to “push forward” phase one economic deal, amid soaring tensions between the two sides on several fronts. The US and China signed the accord in January obliging China to import additional $200 billion worth of American goods, including cars and machinery to farm products. This brought a partial truce to the lingering trade war between the countries, which began in 2018.
But there has been a lag in China’s purchases of the goods due to the COVID-19 pandemic and hence the call for trade talks.
According to an AFP report, Vice Premier Liu He spoke with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the phone, and both sides "agreed to create conditions and atmosphere to continue to push forward the implementation of the phase-one of the China-US economic and trade agreement”. Beijing also said the two countries had a "constructive dialogue on strengthening the coordination of the macroeconomic policies of the two countries".
Washington said the parties “addressed steps that China has taken to effectuate structural changes called for by the agreement”.
Besides the trade standoff, the US and China have been at loggerheads over issues like China not being transparent about the origin of the coronavirus, its mistreatment of Uighur Muslims, Beijing imposing the national security law in Hong Kong and China’s claims over the South China Sea.
The mounting tensions led to US President Donald Trump to step up his rhetoric against China and the US government’s crackdown on Bytedance, the company that owns TikTok and accusing it of being a threat to national security in the US.
The Trump administration has given ByteDance a deadline to divest TikTok before the app is banned in the United States, arguing TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.
The company says it has never provided any US user data to the Chinese government, and that Trump’s crackdown on the app is political.
