After Biden-Xi summit, what next for US-China trade war? | Business

On Nov 18, 2021

The virtual meeting between United States President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping helped ease the growing tension between the two countries but did not make headway in resolving lingering US-China trade war disputes.

The US-China trade war, which began in 2018 under former US President Donald Trump, has resulted in both nations paying higher taxes to bring in goods from the opposing country.

Escalating import tariffs have caused supply chain disruptions that are affecting businesses and individuals worldwide. But at the summit, which took place on Tuesday, economic issues took a back seat to geopolitics.

Biden spoke briefly about China’s “unfair trade and economic policies” harming American workers, but mainly raised concerns about human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, and American support for Taiwan.

In his opening remarks, Biden told Xi, “It seems to be our responsibility — as leaders of China and the United States — to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended. Just simple, straightforward competition.”

Shehzad Qazi, managing director of China Beige Book International, described “straightforward competition” as “just a fancy way of saying the US administration doesn’t want any accidental war or military confrontation.”

“But for now, these terms have also become placeholders for the administration’s lack of an actual China strategy,” Qazi said.

According to Trivium China analyst Joe Mazur, there is a clear understanding in the White House that Beijing isn’t going to budge on many of the core issues driving tension in the bilateral relationship.

So instead, the US is looking for areas that might support a limited degree of bilateral cooperation with China while also shoring up its relationships with allies and partners worldwide.

“This is a major departure from Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy, which envisioned the US effectively taking on China by itself and making little to no effort to find areas of common interest with Beijing,” Mazur said.

“As part of this new strategy, Washington will increasingly look to counter Chinese economic influence by promoting its own trade and infrastructure initiatives. This will naturally engender more economic competition between the US and China but may redound to the benefit of countries in a position to pick and choose the terms of their economic partnerships with Washington, Beijing, or both.”

At the summit, Biden asked the Chinese side to release crude oil reserves to help stabilise soaring global energy prices, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. China was “open” to the idea but had not committed to the request, the Hong Kong-based newspaper said.

In January 2020, Trump and Xi signed a phase one trade…