China and US offer contrasting views on trade war talks, as Beijing confirms agricultural purchases underway
- China’s Ministry of Commerce confirms state and private companies have begun buying soybeans, pork and sorghum
- However, contrasting statements from each side suggest that a wider deal to end the trade war is not within reach
China and the United States issued differing public statements on this week’s trade talks in Shanghai, suggesting that a deal to end the bitter tariff war is not within sight.
The official Chinese statement said that the two sides discussed China increasing its purchases of US agricultural products “according to its own domestic needs and favourable conditions to be offered by the US side for the purchases”.
These “favourable conditions” were not defined, but at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday, Gao Feng, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said that a number of Chinese enterprises, including state-owned and private firms, have already started to purchase certain US farm products, including soybeans, pork and sorghum.
Gao said the two sides reviewed past trade talks and discussed the “principles and methods for future negotiations” during their discussions in Shanghai. There was no indication that either side had set any kind of deadline for the completion of the talks.
An article in Thursday’s Global Times, a nationalistic state-owned tabloid, argued that the conditions China wanted to see involved more goodwill gestures from the US.