(Bloomberg) -- China has called off planned trade talks with the U.S. and is unlikely to sit down with Washington until after the mid-term elections, according to people familiar with the situation.
Beijing has withdrawn a planned delegation to Washington next week, the people told Bloomberg. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that China had scrapped plans to send Vice-Premier Liu He and a mid-level delegation.
In addition to new tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods set to go into effect Sept. 24, the U.S. State Department sanctions against China’s defense agency and its director on Thursday contributed to the ultimate decision to cancel the talks, the people said.
In his push for what he calls a level playing field in dealing with China, President Donald Trump slapped the new tariffs on imports from China and threatened more if Beijing retaliated. On Tuesday, China said it would impose levies on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods effective Sept. 24.
The new tariffs brought “new uncertainties” to China-U.S. negotiations, Gao Feng, a spokesman of China’s Ministry of Commerce said, when answering a question at a press conference on Thursday on whether the countries would have a new round of trade talks. He used exactly the same wording the ministry used in an earlier statement.
No Response
The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Finance didn’t respond to faxes inquiring about the matter on Saturday.
Earlier, the Trump administration said it needs to confront China over its trading practices to defend U.S. long-term interests even as the escalation risks causing pain for American consumers. Inaction would leave the U.S. economy and consumers worse off over the longer run, a senior administration official told reporters on Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
U.S. industry has widely pushed back against the Trump administration’s use of tariffs to force changes to China’s economy, and companies from Walmart Inc. to Gap Inc. and Samsonite International SA have said they’re prepared to raise prices if the new tariffs bite into their business.
Here’s Where Tariffs on $260 Billion of Goods Are Biting in U.S.
Trump’s biggest strike yet in a growing trade fight between the world’s biggest economies will see a 10 percent duty applied to $200 billion of Chinese imports, which could rise to 25 percent next year. He’s threatened duties on a further $267 billion of made-in-China goods, which would hit almost all other consumer products including mobile phones, shoes and clothes.
The latest round of duties comes on top of a 25 percent tariff already imposed on about $50 billion in Chinese goods, which spurred counter-tariffs from Beijing.
Trump’s Stand
Trump continued to hit out at China late this week, signaling the trade war won’t end any time soon.
“It’s time to take a stand on China,” he said in an interview Thursday with Fox News. ”We have no choice. It’s been a long time. They’re hurting us.”
“The new U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, mostly consumer-oriented, will depress spending and hurt the retail sector beginning in 2019,” Seema Shah and Danielle McIntee, analysts with Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note on Friday. “Lower-income families, already pinching pennies, are most exposed, given the likelihood of tariff-related price increases on everyday items.”
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross earlier this week said the tariffs are spread over such a wide range of goods that Americans shouldn’t notice price increases.
“We were trying to do things that were least intrusive on the consumer,” Ross said on CNBC on Tuesday. “We really went item-by-item trying to figure out what would accomplish the punitive purpose on China and yet with the least disruption in the U.S.”
--With assistance from Miao Han.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Haze Fan in Beijing at hfan40@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stanley James at sjames8@bloomberg.net, ;Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, John McCluskey
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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