Seeking breakthrough in trade talks, China sends a feisty bureaucrat to US

China’s man tasked with finding a breakthrough in trade talks with the US is a veteran trade bureaucrat and fluent English speaker who’s called America a “trade bully.”

Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen, 52, will lead a delegation of Chinese officials to Washington later this month, where he will meet US officials led by Undersecretary for International Affairs David Malpass of the Treasury Department. The two men are challenged with finding a way to end an escalating trade war between the world’s two biggest economies after negotiations broke down two months ago.

Differences between the two sides have become a yawning gap since US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on washing machines and solar cells in January. Tit-for-tat tariffs have escalated since, with the US viewing China as a strategic competitor and Trump saying he’s ready to effectively tax all imports from China, which reached more than $500 billion last year.

“Wang Shouwen faces a very difficult negotiation to try to bridge the large gulf in positions between China and the US,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit in Singapore. “Although the resumption of US-China trade talks is good news, the process of finding a trade deal is likely to be protracted. Meanwhile, the trade war is likely to escalate further as additional tariff measures kick in.”
 

Wang is a key official leading China’s trade talks worldwide and he led an advance team to Washington in May.