Beijing has called on the US to “completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures” if it wants trade talks, in some of China’s strongest comments yet on the impasse between the world’s two economic superpowers.
“The unilateral tariff measures were initiated by the US,” said He Yadong, a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson. “If the US truly wants to solve the problem, it should . . . completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures against China and find a way to resolve differences through equal dialogue.”
Beijing has maintained that the US must make the first move to de-escalate the crisis, which is threatening to spark a hard decoupling between the two countries’ economies.
Chinese analysts argue that the US imposition of high tariffs make it difficult for Beijing to find a way to defuse the crisis.
China’s President Xi Jinping would find it difficult to engage personally with Trump on the trade war unless this was preceded by extensive negotiations to hammer out a deal, they say.
I’m no defender of China, but this seems like common sense. If you shat on my front lawn, I’d expect you clean it up before we talk about modifying our shared fence.
You can’t negotiate with a narcissistic personality disorder, not when they’ll deny the shit is from their dog even when captured on camera. Either way, they’ll factor in a way for the occurrence of the shit to be your fault and therefore your problem to clean up.