THE FINAL DATE FOR NEGOTIATIONS IN THE TRADE WAR WAS DETERMINED
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the US would raise customs duties on Chinese products if trade negotiations with China cannot reach any point until March 1st.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the US would raise customs duties on Chinese products if trade negotiations with China cannot reach any point until March 1st.
Lighthizer’s pronouncement of March 1 as a definite deadline was seen as an attempt to clarify the complex messages coming from the White House after the two countries decided to break their tariffs and focus on the negotiations to settle the trade dispute.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also indicated that date as a definite date. He pointed that the US president, does not mention after March.
Referring to the decision that US President Donald Trump agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping to suspend the new customs duties for 90 days, Lighthizer said that the negotiations are designed to raise the custom duties by the end of 90 days.
The course of trade negotiations is decisive in the view of global financial markets. Following the decision of the leaders to focus on negotiations that will overcome trade problems for 90 days, US stock markets rose in anticipation that the trade tensions would ease.
However, after a consensus, the arrest of a senior executive of China’s leading company, Huawei, in Canada, demanding extradition to the US, brought concern over the trade tensions between the two countries. The Chinese foreign ministry called the US ambassador to protest the arrest.
Lighthizer said to the investors in the global markets that faced with the fluctuation since the agreement that the president wants an agreement which will provide security of the US technologies and more access to the Chinese market; otherwise the customs duties will be used. In this first statement after his commissioning for negotiations with China, Lighthizer said that if it is desired to get rid of higher customs duties, the US would like to see concessions from China in many areas in the next few weeks. Among the areas that US expects concessions are China’s buying more American goods, facilitating the US products to access Chinese market and bringing “structural changes” to the system which requires American companies to share the technological knowledge to Chinese companies.
0 Comments