Chinese Vice Premier Leo Hee is going to Washington next week to resume the talks with the United States and avoid a trade war between the two countries, as the White House said on Monday.
Leo, who is close to President Shi Jinping, and he is also in charge of supervising the economic policy of the Asian giant, has led a first round of talks on Thursday and Friday in Beijing with a senior US delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steve Menuchin.
The talks did not resolve the trade dispute between the two countries, especially over the huge US trade deficit with China, which the US President Donald Trump strongly condemns.
“The Chinese vice premier will come here next week to continue talks with the US administration’s economic team,” says the White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders on Monday.
Leo is a former student at Harvard University, and is known for his English proficiency.
China is facing a new tariff threat that may be imposed from May 22 and takes about $ 50 billion worth of exported products to the United States.
According to a document published by the Bloomberg agency, which says that the starting point of the talks in Beijing, was as the US administration is demanding a reduction of at least $ 200 billion by 2020 for the deficit in annual exchanges with China ($ 375 billion in 2017, according to Washington).
And it also calls for reducing China’s customs charges to the level it adopts and putting an end to government subsidies to some vital industrial sectors, to transfer the technology imposed on US companies and to strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights.
But these demands are difficult for China, who demand “fair treatment” for Chinese companies that operating in the United States, according to Bloomberg.
