Update | Chinese vice-premier optimistic about trade with US despite uncertainty over Trump’s China policies
Wang Yang says he takes a positive view because of American businesses’ enthusiasm for trading links with China
Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Yang said on Tuesday that US policies toward China under president-elect Donald Trump may be uncertain, but he is optimistic because of the American business community’s enthusiasm for US-China trade.
At a luncheon with US and Chinese business people and government officials, Wang said he believed that businesses and the US government would ultimately make the “right choices” to take advantage of market opportunities in China’s economy.
“What the US government will do we will wait and see and I think it’s difficult to predict, just like the US presidential election,” Wang said. “The large crowd here tells us one thing. Although there will be a change in the US government, the passion of the US business community for economic cooperation with China has remained unchanged.”
Two weeks after Trump’s stunning election on the back of anti-trade sentiment among workers in US industrial states, the president-elect’s plans for managing tense relations with China remain unclear.
On the campaign trail, Trump had said China was “killing us” on trade. He threatened to declare Beijing a currency manipulator, levy a 45 per cent punitive tariff on all Chinese goods to reduce a massive US trade deficit with China and pull out of the World Trade Organisation, the global trade body that allowed the mainland to join in 2001.