Raw sorghum grain in 2013. China imported more than 0 billion worth of American goods in 2018, including large volumes of soybeans. A trade deal could result in China promising to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of American products, including sorghum, further cementing Beijing’s role in the economy. (Photo: Christopher Smith/The New York Times)Written by Ana Swanson and Keith Bradsher
At the heart of President Donald Trump’s negotiations with China is a troubling contradiction: The United States wants to use the trade talks to encourage the country to adopt a more market-oriented economy. But a key element of a prospective deal may end up reinforcing the economic power of the Chinese state.
Negotiators are still working out deal terms, but any agreement seems certain to involve China’s promise to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods. For Trump, this is an essential element that will help reduce the United States’ record trade deficit with China and bolster farmers and other constituencies hurt by his trade war.
But those purchases will be ordered by the Chinese state and most will be carried out by state-controlled Chinese businesses, further cementing Beijing’s role in managing its economy and potentially making U.S. industries even more beholden to the Chinese.
“It seems like those types of really simplistic purchasing commitment type of arrangements would actually reinforce state ownership rather than discourage it,” said Rufus Yerxa, head of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents the United States’ largest exporters.
Soybeans outside of Salina, Kan., Nov. 2, 2018. China imported more than $100 billion worth of American goods in 2018, including large volumes of soybeans. (Photo: Christopher Smith/The New York Times)After months of talks, the two sides are inching closer to an agreement. Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s top trade negotiator, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, discussed the remaining sticking points with their Chinese counterparts Thursday evening and Friday in Beijing. Mnuchin, in a tweet Friday, said the talks had been “constructive.”
Both sides are trying to iron out an agreement by this week, to coincide with a visit to Washington by Liu He, the Chinese special envoy charged with negotiating the deal, who will begin meeting with his American counterparts Wednesday.
The United States and China had been looking to reach a tentative agreement by the end of Liu’s visit, with a signing ceremony between Trump and President Xi Jinping of China potentially later this month.
But the two sides are still wrestling with two major sticking points: how an agreement will be monitored and enforced and how many of Trump’s tariffs come off and when, said Myron Brilliant, executive vice president and head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Brilliant said there was no question the United States and China were “in the endgame with regard to a deal.” However, he said these factors were “complicating the fact that the agreement is 90 percent done at this point.”
Soybeans on one of the fields of the Knopf Family Farm outside of Salina, Kan., Nov. 2, 2018. China imported more than $100 billion worth of American goods last year, including large volumes of soybeans. (Photo: Christopher Smith/The New York Times)To pave the way toward an agreement, China made several announcements that could benefit U.S. companies. Last week, Chinese regulators approved JPMorgan Chase’s request to establish a majority owned and controlled securities brokerage firm in the country, a change China had discussed since entering the World Trade Organization two decades ago. Chinese officials have also floated the idea of an expanded trial that would allow foreign cloud computing companies to operate more freely.
On Sunday evening, China’s finance ministry issued two statements saying that Beijing would continue to suspend tariffs it imposed last year on American cars and car parts in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. Those tariffs, which were suspended while the two sides tried to reach an agreement, were supposed to resume at the end of March, but China said it would extend the suspension indefinitely as a gesture of goodwill.
The finance ministry said “we hope that the U.S. and China will work together to step up consultations and make practical efforts toward the goal of ending trade friction.”
While the two sides are closer to an agreement than at any point in the past, it remains unclear how successful the Trump administration will be in achieving its key goals. The president’s trade war was initiated in large part to try to reorient the Chinese economy and force it to become more open to American companies and investment. Using punishing tariffs as leverage, the Trump administration has pressed China to roll back its heavy hand in the economy, including asking Beijing to curtail subsidies to state-owned firms and to end its practice of forcing foreign companies doing business in China to transfer their technology to Chinese competitors.
China has not readily committed to these goals, in part because such commitments are seen as infringing on China’s sovereignty and undercutting the power of the Chinese state. What the Chinese have agreed to most readily is purchasing American goods, especially commodities that can fuel their economy.
While the final list could be different, the United States and China have discussed the purchase of products including corn, soybeans, sorghum, natural gas, oil, coal, chemicals, semiconductors and airplanes, according to people with knowledge of the talks.
The parking lot where Ford models are stored for shipment, in Chongqing, China. (Photo: Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times)The Trump administration views these purchases as necessary to bolster the president’s support across farming and manufacturing communities hard hit by the trade war and to help narrow the gap between what China sells to the United States and what it buys. The administration has been working on various draft lists of what it wants China to purchase, according to people who have viewed them.
The final purchasing amount is not yet clear. In December, Mnuchin said that China had made an offer to buy more than $1.2 trillion in American goods as part of the talks. But economists and China analysts have cautioned that such a large amount could be hard for the United States to produce and export.
The United States exported just $120 billion of goods to China last year. With the American economy hovering near full employment, it lacks the productive capacity to raise exports by hundreds of billions of dollars in the short term. The United States could redirect some of the goods it sells to other countries to China instead, for instance diverting soybeans headed to Europe to China.
But a deal that would require China to buy even more from the United States is raising concerns that China could expand its leverage over the United States.
“If it can be negotiated by government fiat, it can be taken away by government fiat,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an energy-focused research firm.
The deal could usher in a wave of new American exports if China agrees to open its markets more fully. Removing its requirements that American carmakers and financial services firms team up with a Chinese entity to do business in the country, for instance, could give those firms more ability to sell goods and services to China.
But in other industries, including agriculture, energy and aviation, purchases associated with a trade deal would be made directly by state-controlled entities. And while that would mean greater revenues for American companies, skeptics say it could also increase the leverage that China has over the United States in the future.
“We are handing them the ability to coerce our companies,” said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
