President Donald Trump\u2019s newfound zeal to resolve his trade war with China risks hitting some familiar obstacles, including himself.<\/p>\n
Trump set up a call with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday, the first between the leaders in six months. Afterward, he directed his Cabinet to draft potential terms for a trade deal he could agree to with Xi at the G20 conference in Argentina at the end of the month, according to four people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose discussions are moving along nicely,\u201d Trump wrote on Twitter after speaking with Xi, five days before US midterm elections that will determine whether his party retains control of Congress. At a campaign rally in Columbia, Missouri, he added: \u201cThey want to make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discord has already arisen among Trump\u2019s trade team: US trade representative Robert Lighthizer is opposed to a push for a deal at the G20, according to two of the people.<\/p>\n
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow downplayed the potential for a quick deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing a normal, routine run-through of things we already put together and normal preparation,\u201d Kudlow said on CNBC Friday. \u201cOK, there\u2019s no mass movement, there\u2019s no huge thing, we\u2019re not on the cusp of a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter Navarro, director of the National Trade Council within the White House, struck a similar wait-and-see note on Saturday about the Trump-Xi meeting. In a Fox News interview he said the US is \u201cnot dependent on China economically.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be fine regardless of what happens in Argentina,\u201d Navarro said, adding that trade talks with China are \u201cmore difficult\u201d than those with other countries ranging from Japan to Canada.<\/p>\n
Trump has a history of agreeing in principle to deals before backing out. His critics say the trade pacts that he has so far completed, including a renegotiation of Nafta, represent little more than incremental improvements. And he has previously made concessions to U.S. adversaries that have drawn backlash from both Democrats and Republicans.<\/p>\n
In May, after his last phone call with Xi, Trump agreed to ease up on sanctions imposed on Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp., saying they would cost too many Chinese jobs. The decision was roundly lambasted in Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this does turn out to be ZTE round 2, the president will be attacked by Democrats, and some Republicans, for talking a huge game on China but instead being played,\u201d said Derek Scissors, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n
His critics say Trump also gave away too much to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in negotiations over Pyongyang\u2019s nuclear weapons program, with little to show in exchange, and was too conciliatory toward Russian President Vladimir Putin at their summit in Helsinki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump\u2019s newfound zeal to resolve his trade war with China risks hitting some familiar obstacles, including himself. Trump set up a call with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday, the first between the leaders in six months. Afterward, he directed his Cabinet to draft potential terms for a trade deal he could agree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46290,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46288\/revisions\/46290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}