US Ambassador to China
Clark Randt Jr (L) and US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (2nd L) greet
China's Vice Premier Wu Yi upon her arrival at Andrews Air Force Base near
Washington May 21, 2007. [Reuters]
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WASHINGTON -- Both the United States and China are bringing huge
delegations for their second round of high-level discussions aimed at lessening
economic tensions. It was unclear whether they will achieve sufficient success
to blunt growing protectionist pressures in the US Congress.
The Bush administration is expressing the hope that deals will be reached
that will expand opportunities for American air carriers to fly to China and for
American banks and stock brokerage firms to do business there.
Beijing, urging the two sides to try defusing tensions, said Tuesday it is
trying to narrow the trade gap and pledged to import more US goods.
The meetings are to begin Tuesday with opening remarks from Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi.
Paulson is leading a US delegation that includes top officials from 10
Cabinet-level agencies and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Wu's team is
expected to include 14 Cabinet-level ministers.
A similar collection of high-powered talent was assembled for the first
session of the Strategic Economic Dialogue last December in Beijing. Under an
agreement announced last fall, the two countries plan to meet twice a year to
discuss a large range of economic issues.
The two sides will dine Tuesday night at the State Department. The Chinese
delegation also will meet with President George W. Bush during the visit and
have private talks with key members of Congress.
Unhappiness about the growing U.S trade deficit with China is threatening to
provoke a protectionist backlash in Congress. Lawmakers are expressing outrage
over a trade gap that last year hit an all-time high of $232.5 billion (euro173
billion), the largest deficit ever recorded with a single country and one-third
of America's record overall deficit of $765.3 billion (euro569.25 billion).
Members of Congress are promoting a number of bills that would impose penalty
tariffs on Chinese products unless China does more to stop what US critics see
as unfair trade practices such as China's currency system and the rampant piracy
of American products.
American manufacturers contend that China is manipulating its currency to
keep it undervalued against the dollar by as much as 40 percent, making Chinese
goods cheaper in the US market and American products more expensive in China.
Last week, a bipartisan group of 42 members of the House of Representatives
petitioned the Bush administration to bring a trade case against China on the
currency issue. Lawmakers said they were not impressed by China's announcement
on Friday that it was slightly widening the daily trading range for the yuan,
which could allow the currency to rise in value more quickly.
Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, a leading critic of China, called the
currency action a "nice gesture, but in the past, most of their gestures have
not produced any concrete change."
Schumer has said China must move more quickly if it wants to derail a
congressional push for punitive legislation that some fear could be the start of
a full-blown trade war between the two nations.
There were reports that China seriously considered calling off this round of
talks after the Bush administration, in an effort to pre-empt tougher actions in
Congress, imposed penalty tariffs on Chinese paper products in a fight over
government subsidies and filed two cases against China before the World Trade
Organization.
But China in recent days has made a number of moves in an effort to defuse
American unhappiness. In addition to announcing the slight change in its
currency band, China said early in the month that it would buy $4.3 billion
(euro3.2 billion) in American high-technology products from such companies as
Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Hewlett Packard Co. in its latest US buying
spree.
"It is not China's purpose to gain a surplus," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Jiang Yu said at a news conference Tuesday in Beijing, adding that China was
reducing reliance on exports by increasing domestic consumption.
"We are going to expand in the future our imports from the United States,"
she said.
And over the weekend, China announced that it would invest $3 billion
(euro2.2 billion) of its $1.2 trillion (euro890 billion) in foreign currency
reserves in Blackstone Group LP, the second-largest US private equity firm.
It remains to be seen whether the new flurry of activity will be enough to
persuade members of Congress to stop pushing for punitive sanctions in light of
a still-rising trade gap with China and voter unhappiness over 3.2 million US
manufacturing jobs lost since 2000.
"I think Congress will end up penalizing the Chinese in some way for what
lawmakers regard as an undervalued exchange rate," said Gary Hufbauer, a trade
expert at the Peterson Institute, a Washington think tank. "The details of how
the penalties will be crafted and what kind of flexibility the administration
will be given in imposing them will all be subject to debate."