Tag Archives: U.S. China

New round of U.S.-China trade talks to begin in Washington on Tuesday

Aides set up platforms before a group photo with members of U.S. and Chinese trade negotiation delegations at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China February 15, 2019. Mark Schiefelbein/Pool via REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new round of talks between the United States and China to resolve their trade war will take place in Washington on Tuesday, with follow-up sessions at a higher level later in the week, the White House said.

The talks follow a round of negotiations that ended in Beijing last week without a deal but which officials said had generated progress on contentious issues between the world’s two largest economies.

The talks are aimed at “achieving needed structural changes in China that affect trade between the United States and China. The two sides will also discuss China’s pledge to purchase a substantial amount of goods and services from the United States,” the White House said in a statement.

The higher-level talks will start on Thursday and be led by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a strong proponent of pressing China to end practices that the United States says include forced technology transfers from U.S. companies and intellectual property theft.

China, which denies that it engages in such practices, confirmed that Vice Premier Liu He will visit Washington on Thursday and Friday for the talks.

The White House said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, economic adviser Larry Kudlow and trade adviser Peter Navarro would also take part in the talks.

U.S. tariffs on $200 billion in imports from China are set to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent if no deal is reached by March 1.

Trump, who suggested last week that he could extend the deadline for the talks, reiterated in a speech on Monday that the negotiations had been fruitful.

“We’re making a lot of progress. Nobody expected this was going to be happening,” he told a crowd in Florida.

Speaking in Beijing on Tuesday, the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, told a visiting U.S. business delegation that everyone was “paying attention” to the talks.

“If our two countries can respect each other and cooperate it will not only be the right choice for us but it is also the common hope of international society,” Wang told the group, which included U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Myron Brilliant and former U.S. deputy secretary of the treasury Robert Kimmitt.

Brilliant said that in the last year or so there had been “serious discussions about economic issues”.

“We are hopeful that the two sides will reach a comprehensive, bold and significant trade agreement that will be enduring and long-lasting. This is the challenge for both governments.”

(Reporting by Jeff Mason in WASHINGTON and Ben Blanchard and Lusha Zhang in BEIJING; Editing by Paul Tait)

XPress West ends high speed rail deal with China

A CRRC worker walks past an unfinished metro train car in the company's Kunming factory, Yunnan province,

By Robin Respaut

(Reuters) – XpressWest, the private U.S. firm proposing to build a high-speed rail link between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, terminated a joint venture with Chinese companies less than nine months after the deal was announced, citing delays faced by its partner.

Las Vegas-based XpressWest said the decision to end the relationship stemmed from problems with “timely performance” and challenges that the Chinese companies, grouped under a consortium called China Railway International (CRI), faced “obtaining required authority to proceed with required development activities”.

XpressWest was started by Las Vegas developer Marnell Companies. It formed the venture with the Chinese consortium in September, infusing $100 million into the project. XpressWest had expected to break ground as soon as this year on the project, which one analyst estimated to be worth $5 billion.

The announcement is a blow to China, which has built the world’s largest high-speed rail network in less than a decade. The XpressWest project was seen as a foothold into a burgeoning U.S. high-speed rail market and an opportunity to showcase China’s technology.

China’s CRRC Corp, the world’s biggest train maker by revenue, joined the consortium in September.

XpressWest chief executive Tony Marnell said in a statement that his company’s “ambitions outpace CRI’s ability to move the project forward timely and efficiently”.

Calls, emails and a fax to the Chinese group seeking comment were not answered during a public holiday in China.

But China’s official Xinhua news agency cited an unnamed manager at CRI as saying XpressWest was “irresponsible” to make such a statement while its talks with CRI were still going on.

The “unilateral” announcement also violated the cooperation framework agreement signed by the two sides, which stipulates that one side should not release related information without approval by the other, Xinhua mentioned the executive as saying. It said the executive was “responsible” for the joint venture.

MAIN HURDLE

XpressWest said it will now aggressively pursue other development partnerships and options.

The biggest challenge has been a federal funding requirement that high-speed trains be manufactured in the United States, even though no such trains are produced in the country, Marnell said.

“This inflexible requirement has been a fundamental barrier to financing high-speed rail in our country,” Marnell said. “Is our leadership going to force projects throughout the United States to seek financial support for infrastructure in our country from foreign governments?”

XpressWest said it was anticipating the completion of environment work to develop the Southern California portion of the rail line, with environmental approvals expected by September.

XpressWest is one of at least three privately financed high-speed trains proposed to be built in the United States over the next few years. Companies in Texas and Minnesota also plan to tap private cash from investors globally, with help from foreign train makers and governments eager to export train technology.

The projects rely primarily on partnerships with Japanese or Chinese firms that face saturated train markets at home.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Leslie Adler and Muralikumar Anantharaman)