US-China trade talks collapse was ‘not normal’, says veteran US negotiator, as focus turns political
- Face-to-face talks are set to resume in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first time since May
- Veteran US trade negotiator Claire Reade warns economics are now ‘not the driver’ of talks as Washington political consensus against China grows
The dramatic collapse in US-China talks in May suggested that Chinese negotiators did not have full political backing for the concessions they proposed to reach a deal to end the trade war, according to a veteran US trade official ahead of the resumption of face-to-face negotiations this week in Shanghai.
China was reported to have made last minute, large-scale edits to a near-150 page trade agreement draft, which scuppered the prospects for a deal after 11 rounds of negotiations.
The changes suggested that Chinese negotiators never “really connected with all the people who needed to be connected to in order to make the deal”, said Claire Reade, who spent eight years negotiating with China as a senior figure in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
The unexpected changes mean there “is going to be a premium on being very careful and conservative” in future talks on the Chinese side, Reade told the South China Morning Post.
“It is very normal for a piece of text to be proposed and the other side to then red line it back, but you don't have text that's been in place for months and all of a sudden come back striking-out what has been agreed. That's not normal – something happened,” Reade explained.