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Joe Biden to work with allies to stop China’s ‘economic abuses’
- Pledging ‘an approach of patience’, White House press secretary says Biden will evaluate the tariffs currently in place
- Deliberations over the ban on investment in companies including China Mobile are being undertaken by the State and Treasury departments, says the spokeswoman
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US President Joe Biden’s administration has started a review of his predecessor’s trade war with China and other actions taken against Beijing, and will work with allies to stop the country’s “economic abuses on many fronts”.
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Pledging “an approach of patience”, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that Biden “will take a multilateral approach to engaging with China, and that includes evaluating the tariffs currently in place, and he wants to ensure that we take any steps in coordination with our allies and partners, and with Democrats and Republicans in Congress”.
The trade war that former president Donald Trump started with China in 2018 stopped escalating a year ago, when he and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He signed a phase one agreement that committed Beijing to specific targets for the country’s purchases of US goods and services.
Biden’s intentions with respect to the punitive tariffs has become a key focus on the US-China front as an indication of how the new leadership in Washington will handle the bilateral relationship.
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Biden to approach US-China relations with ‘patience’, says White House
Biden to approach US-China relations with ‘patience’, says White House
An analysis of Chinese customs data by the Peterson Institute of International Economics last week showed that China fulfilled only 58 per cent of the phase one targets, raising questions about whether the agreement was ever feasible even without the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
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The White House is also running inter-agency reviews on other US-China matters, including an executive order by Trump that barred US investors from making new purchases in three Chinese telecommunications carriers beginning January 11 and gave them until November to sell their existing holdings.
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