Chinese negotiators have been making more demands due to China’s leverage over supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets, he says
US tariffs on Chinese imports of around 55 per cent are a “good status quo,” but the Trump administration would like to find areas where bilateral trade could increase more freely, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday.
Greer’s comments at the Economic Club of New York indicated no immediate move towards lowering US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods ahead of a November 10 deadline for the expiration of a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies.
“If you ask the president, ‘Do we have a deal with China?’ He would say, ‘Yeah, this is our deal. I’ve got 55% tariffs on it. That’s the deal.’ So that is a good status quo,” Greer said.
But he said he wanted to continue regular discussions with Chinese officials to try to achieve a more balanced trade relationship, where the two sides can increase trade in “non-sensitive goods” such as US agricultural products and Chinese consumer goods.
