US should ‘take the gun off’ China’s head, says Beijing’s vice-minister of commerce
Wang Shouwen calls the US a ‘trade bully’ and says Trump’s conduct was ‘against the interest of the US businesses, the US consumers [and] US workers’
The United States should “take the gun off” China’s head and start keeping its word in order to have useful talks on ending their trade war, Beijing’s vice-minister of commerce said on Thursday.
Wang Shouwen, representing China during the country’s policy review at the World Trade Organisation this week, noted that the US “started the war”, which has seen escalating threats to impose reciprocal tariffs on goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
“We have had talks and those talks produced good progress, but this progress was ignored by one party and that party went ahead with a trade war,” Wang told reporters in Geneva.
Asked what conditions would be necessary for negotiations on easing the conflict, he said: “For any talk to be successful, one party needs to take the gun off the head of the other party.
“And for any talk to be useful, one party needs to be keeping its word. If one side keeps chopping and changing all the time the talk would be pointless,” he added.
So far, the two powers have only imposed tariffs on US$34 billion worth of each others’ goods. But Washington on Tuesday threatened to target an additional US$200 billion in imports, and China immediately vowed to retaliate.