By David Lawder and Elizabeth Howcroft
PARIS, March 16 (Reuters) – Any potential delay to a planned summit this month between the U.S. and Chinese presidents would not stem from trade or shipping disputes with China but from the possibility that Donald Trump needs to remain in Washington because of the war with Iran, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday.
Bessent, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer led two days of talks in Paris aimed at preparing the highly anticipated meeting between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping from March 31 to April 2.
“What I would say about our talks here is they were constructive, and they show the stability in the relationship,” Bessent told journalists.
However, he left open whether the leaders’ summit would go ahead as scheduled after Trump told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday that he could also postpone as he presses Beijing to help unblock the crucial Strait of Hormuz closed by Iran.
“The postponement, if it happens, would be because the commander-in-chief of the United States military believes that he should stay in the United States while this war is being prosecuted,” Bessent said. He also said any delay would not have anything to do with China’s stance on the Strait of Hormuz.
TRADE TALKS
China’s chief trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, described the talks at the Paris headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development as “in-depth, candid and constructive consultations,” and said both sides had committed to maintaining the stability of bilateral tariff levels.
Greer said the two sides had agreed on general terms of a “work plan” to tee up agreements for Trump and Xi to consider when they do meet.
These included expanding U.S. exports of agricultural and energy goods, as well as a formal mechanism to manage trade with China, which he said might be called the U.S.-China Board of Trade.
This body would identify “what kinds of things should we be importing from China, what kinds of things should we be exporting to China, to really make sure that we can focus on areas of mutual benefit.”
The agreement on broad contours of the mechanism by the two sides, as well as a less-developed “Board of Investment” to sort out investment issues, was first reported by Reuters late on Sunday.
TRADE PROBES
Li said the Chinese had also expressed “solemn concern” about Washington’s new Section 301 unfair trade practices probes that target China and many other trading partners over alleged excess industrial capacity and failures to ban products produced with forced labour.
The investigations could result in new tariffs within months after the U.S. Supreme Court in late February tore down Trump’s broad global tariffs imposed under an emergency law.
“We will closely follow the development of these investigations, and take relevant measures to safeguard China’s legitimate rights and interests at appropriate times,” Li said.
The Paris talks followed several meetings to ease tension last year between He, Bessent and Greer and Li.
But with little time to prepare and Washington’s attention focused on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, prospects for major trade breakthroughs were limited, in Paris or at the Beijing summit, trade analysts said.
“Given that the leaders may meet up to four times this year, these deliverables maybe can be spread out, rolled out over the year,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator who now heads the Asia Society’s Washington policy center.
These meetings include a potential state visit to the United States for Xi, a China-hosted APEC summit in November and a U.S.-hosted G20 summit in December.
(Reporting by David Lawder and Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris and Chen Xiuhao in Beijing; Writing by Leigh Thomas and David Lawder; additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Diane Craft and Bill Berkrot)
