Trade war clouds outlook as finance chiefs meet in Japan

Finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Japan this weekend will try to make headway on longstanding issues such as how much global giants like Facebook and Amazon should pay in taxes.

They're likely to end up focusing a large share of their attention on how to keep global growth on track when the world's two biggest economies are entrenched in an escalating trade war.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has headed trade talks with Beijing along with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, was due to meet with Yi Gang, governor of China's central bank, on the sidelines of the G-20's annual financial gathering in Fukuoka in southern Japan.

But it was unclear if their meeting, a possible prelude to talks at the G-20 summit later this month between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, might lead to a restart of those talks after weeks of stalemate.

As the Trump administration prepares to expand retaliatory tariff hikes of up to 25 per cent to another USD 300 billion of Chinese products, Beijing has sought to highlight China's capacity to endure and overcome hardship.

Yi told Bloomberg Television in an interview broadcast Friday that he expected the meeting with Mnuchin to be "difficult."