Will Steven Mnuchin’s meeting with China’s central bank chief at G20 help break US-China trade impasse?
- The scheduled meeting with People’s Bank of China governor Yi Gang would be the first face-to-face discussion since negotiations collapsed a month ago
- It could provide an indication of whether Xi Jinping and Donald Trump will meet at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka later this month
Chinese central bank governor Yi Gang’s meeting with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin this weekend at a gathering of G20 finance leaders in Japan marks the first chance to break an impasse in the trade war since negotiations broke down a month ago.
The scheduled bilateral meeting between the two senior officials could offer signs for a possible meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka on June 28-29.
Analysts said hopes for a solution to the current deadlock in the near term remained slim, with the direct involvement of Xi and Trump in the negotiations needed as a precondition to reach a deal to end the year-long trade war.
“Trump and Xi are most likely confirmed to meet later this month but the question is under what kind of agenda?” said Zhou Hao, Asia senior emerging market economist at German bank Commerzbank. “The most important signal from this weekend would be whether both sides are still willing to continue talks.”
But such expectations are at the same time clouded on Thursday by Trump’s reiterated threat to hit China with further tariffs on another US$300 billion of Chinese goods. The US has already put a formal review process on. Reuters reported that the US president said while talks were ongoing, no face-to-face meetings have been held since May 10, the day he more than doubled tariffs to 25 per cent on US$200 billion of imports from China.