According to reporting by the Financial Times, the US’ top economic advisor Larry Kudlow is throwing down the gauntlet once again with China, accusing the superpower of refusing to engage in trade talks with the US.
Key highlights
According to the US’ Kudlow, China has done “nothing” to try and defuse the current state of trade affairs with the US, a sentiment that carries oddly into the week with the US as being the principal instigator of the current trade stand-off.
The US began by slapping a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of trade tariffs on Chinese-made imported goods, and in an interview with the Financial Times, Larry Kudlow complained that despite the US’ list of demands from China, which includes far-reaching demands on technology transfers, industrial subsidies, and economic reform, China “basically hasn’t changed for five or six months”.
The US is expected to forge ahead with another raft of tariffs against China in the coming weeks if no action continues to be seen on the Sino front, and markets are beginning to brace for a potential China-engineered drop in the value of the Chinese Yuan, or renminbi, in an effort to offset trade pressures from the US.
“It’s really the president and the Chinese Communist party, they have to make a decision, and so far they have not, or they have made a decision not to do anything, nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr Kudlow said. For their part, Chinese officials have complained of a lack of flexibility on the US side, as well as unpredictability and lack of a single voice within the Trump administration. – The Financial Times
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