China balks at Biden’s insistence on maintaining Trump-era tariffs, while think tank urges ‘recoupling’
- Removing tariffs is ‘conducive to the recovery of the global economy’, commerce ministry says
- But President Joe Biden, while acknowledging pressure from the business community, says ‘we’re not there yet’
“The Chinese side has always believed that cancelling the additional tariffs is good for China, the United States and the world,” ministry spokeswoman Shu Jueting said when asked to comment on Biden’s statement. “Especially under the current inflationary situation, lifting additional tariffs is in the fundamental interests of consumers and producers in both China and the US, and it is conducive to the recovery of the global economy.”
China has insisted that all tariffs on Chinese imports added by the United States during the trade war must be scrapped immediately as part of any deal to end the protracted conflict, although it has fallen short of meeting of the targets set in the phase-one trade deal signed with the Trump administration.
Lu Xiang, a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, expects China to keep pressing the US to remove the tariffs, by leveraging its strong position in the global supply chain.
