US and China must not split world in two, warns ex-Washington commerce secretary
- Work to do after trade deal to rebuild relationship, says Carlos Gutierrez, who served in George W. Bush’s administration
- Wrong to think ‘trade war will finish and everything will go back to the way it was’
China and the United States are close to a deal on trade but need to keep working to build mutual trust and avoid forcing countries to choose sides in future, former US commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez has said.
“It would be wrong to assume that this trade war will finish and everything will go back to the way it was,” he said on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in China’s southern Hainan province. “We have a lot of work to do after that to build trust and understanding.
“We’re going to be together for a long, long time, and to assume that we can break the world up into China supporters or US supporters – I think that’s wrong.
“After there’s a deal on trade, I think that there will be a different environment to have an open dialogue … We’ll ask ourselves, both countries, what kind of future do we want and what kind of world do we want? I don’t think that the answer will be that we want a world split in half, some with China and some with the US.”