Mnuchin expresses optimism trade standoffs can be resolved

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank repeatedly warned at their meetings this week that intensifying trade tensions could jeopardize a healthy global economic expansion.

But US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed cautious optimism Saturday that countries could settle their differences without a trade war.

Mnuchin met during the past three days with financial officials from China, Japan and Europe over a series of punitive tariffs unveiled by the Trump administration against China and other trading partners.

In a session with reporters, Mnuchin refused to say how close the United States was to resolving the various trade disputes, but he did say progress had been made.

The United States and China are on the brink of what would be the biggest trade dispute since World War II. Each has proposed imposing tariffs of USD 50 billion on each other's products; President Donald Trump is looking to impose tariffs up to USD 100 billion more on Chinese goods.

In a speech earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to open China's market wider to foreign companies, raising hopes the dispute with Washington could be resolved. Mnuchin said he discussed Xi's proposals with Chinese officials.

"We are cautiously optimistic," Mnuchin told reporters, saying that he may soon travel to Beijing for further talks.

The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said Sunday that China welcomes a visit from the US to Beijing to discuss trade issues and confirms it has "received information" regarding Washington's interest in such a trip.

Trade tensions dominated the three days of talks among top finance officials attending meetings of the Group of 20 major economies, the 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending agency, the World Bank.

The officials roundly criticized Trump's get-tough approach to trade, a reversal of seven decades of U.S. support for increasing freedom in global commerce. In his speech to the IMF's policy committee yesterday, Yi Gang, the head of China's central bank, said that global growth could be hurt by "an escalation of trade frictions caused by unilateral actions," an obvious reference to America's threatened tariffs against China.

Mnuchin insisted that the United States was not trying to provoke a global trade war but seeking to protect American jobs from unfair competition.