Beijing said on Thursday any claims of ongoing trade talks with Washington were ‘groundless’ after US president Donald Trump played up the prospects of a deal to lower hefty tariffs he imposed on China.
The world’s two leading economies are locked in an escalating tit-for-tat trade battle triggered by Trump’s new levies on Chinese goods, which have reached 145 per cent on many products.
Beijing has responded with new 125 per cent duties on imports from the United States.
The tariff blitz — which Trump says is retaliation for unfair trade practices, as well as a bid to restore US manufacturing prowess — has rattled markets and raised fears of a global recession.
Beijing denied Trump’s claim that negotiations were being conducted daily.
‘As the competent department for foreign economic and trade relations, I would like to emphasise that there are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States,’ Chinese commerce ministry spokesman He Yadong told a news conference.
‘Any claims about the progress of China-US economic and trade negotiations are groundless and have no factual basis,’ He said.
‘China urges the United States to correct its wrong practices, show the sincerity needed for talks (and) return to the correct track of equal dialogue and consultation.’
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that his country would have a ‘fair deal with China’, adding when asked if Washington was talking to Beijing that ‘everything’s active’.
Asked if there is direct US contact with China on trade, Trump said: ‘Every day.’
China’s foreign ministry also responded to the claims on Thursday, calling reports of ongoing negotiations ‘false’.
‘As far as I know, China and the United States have not conducted any consultations or negotiations on the issue of tariffs, let alone reached any agreement,’ foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a daily news conference.
Beijing’s denial of ongoing negotiations coincides with comments made Wednesday by US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who told reporters that the two countries were ‘not yet’ talking on an agreement to lower tariffs.
‘I think both sides are waiting to speak to the other,’ he said at an event on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington.
The IMF this week revised down its forecast for global growth, citing an increasingly uncertain economic outlook in which ‘downside risks dominate’.
It also significantly lowered its forecast for China’s economic expansion this year to four per cent — well below Beijing’s official target of around five per cent.
Chinese exports last year reached record highs, but experts say that strong turbulence to global trade brought about by US tariffs may force Beijing to depend on other sources of activity to meet its goals.
