US unlikely to name trade war ‘point person’ amid White House chaos, leaving Wang Qishan with no counterpart to meet
Dizzying speed of staff turnover in the Trump administration may make it difficult to name a US interlocutor for talks on averting all-out trade conflict
The US is unlikely to satisfy China’s request that it name a point person to help avert a trade war between the world’s two largest economies, potentially leaving newly elevated Vice-President Wang Qishan with no American counterpart to meet, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
The possibility that such an interlocutor would be named has diminished as US President Donald Trump’s cabinet gets reshuffled at a dizzying speed, disrupting the countries’ communication and hampering China’s effort to use negotiation to defuse the rising tensions, they said.
Chris Johnson of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a former senior China analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, said that with Trump’s cabinet changing “on a daily basis”, it is difficult for the White House to name a point person for trade war-aversion talks.
“The [Sino-US] relationship is too big for a single person to really be the focal point,” Johnson said.
Beijing had made the request in February during US visits by high-level Chinese officials including Yang Jiechi, a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo, and President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, Liu He.