US wants stable trade with China instead of conflict, says Jamieson Greer

Greer claimed that the US trade deficit with China was down "about 25 per cent" since President Donald Trump came to office, a move in the "right direction" for a team seeking to balance flow of goods

By Catherine Lucey

  US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the US is prioritising a stable trade dynamic with China despite a push from some allies to take coordinated action against Beijing. 

“I don’t think anyone wants to have a full-on economic conflict with China and we’re not having that,” Greer said Thursday at the American Growth Summit in Washington. “In fact, President Trump has had the opportunity to use all the leverage we have against China — and we’ve had a lot, right — whether it comes to software, semiconductors or all kinds of things. A lot of allies are interested in taking coordinated action, but the decision right now is we want to have stability in this relationship.”

 

Greer claimed that the US trade deficit with China was down “about 25 per cent” since President Donald Trump came to office, a move in the “right direction” for a team seeking to balance the flow of goods. At the same time, he acknowledged that Chinese products were still making their way to the US, including by transshipment through other nations.

 

“For this moment in time, we want to make sure that China is buying the kinds of things from us we should be selling them: aircraft, chemicals, medical devices and agricultural products,” he said. “We can buy things from them that are not sensitive.”

 

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck a deal in late October that saw the sides agree to extend a tariff truce, roll back export controls and reduce other trade barriers. Still, some key elements of the deal — including the sale of the US operations of social video app TikTok, expanded soybean purchases, and an increase in licenses to export critical rare earths from China — remain works in progress.

 

Greer said the US was monitoring the relationship “literally on a daily basis.”

 

“We have to get our own house in order,” Greer said. “We need to make sure that we are on a good path to reindustrialization, including for critical minerals.”