US, China resume talks in Stockholm to ease tariff hostilities
The US and China could agree to an extension of a tariff truce struck in mid-May.
STOCKHOLM - US and Chinese officials began a second day of
talks in Stockholm on July 29 to resolve longstanding economic disputes and step back from an escalating trade war between the world's two biggest economies.
The meetings may not yield immediate large breakthroughs but the two sides could agree to another 90-day extension of
a tariff truce struck in mid-May .
It may also pave the way for a potential meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later in 2025 , though Mr Trump on July 29 denied going out of his way to seek one.
The delegations met for more than five hours on July 28 at Rosenbad, the Swedish prime minister's office in central Stockholm.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was seen arriving at Rosenbad on July 29 morning after a separate meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. China's Vice-Premier He Lifeng also arrived at the venue.
Neither side made statements after the first day of talks.
China is facing an Aug 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with Mr Trump's administration, after reaching preliminary deals in May and June to end weeks of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs and a cut-off of rare earth minerals.
Without an agreement, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil from US duties snapping back to triple-digit levels that would amount to a bilateral trade embargo.
The Stockholm talks follow Mr Trump's biggest trade deal yet with the European Union on July 27 for a 15 per cent tariff on most EU goods exports to the United States, and a deal with Japan.
The Financial Times reported on July 28 that the United States had paused curbs on tech exports to China to avoid disrupting trade talks with Beijing and support Mr Trump's efforts to secure a meeting with Mr Xi in 2025 .
Mr Trump pushed back against suggestions he was seeking a meeting with Mr Xi.
'This is not correct, I am not SEEKING anything! I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended. Otherwise, no interest!' he wrote on Truth Social.
Complex talks
Meanwhile, in Washington, US senators from both major parties plan to introduce bills this week targeting China over its treatment of minority groups, dissidents, and Taiwan, emphasising security and human rights, which could complicate the talks in Stockholm.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te is also set to delay an August trip his team had floated to the Trump administration that would have included stops in the United States, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on July 28 .
The potential visit would have infuriated Beijing, possibly derailing the trade talks. China claims Taiwan as its own territory, a position Taiwan rejects, and denounces any show of support for Taipei from Washington.
Previous US-China trade talks in Geneva and London in May and June focused on bringing US and Chinese retaliatory tariffs down from triple-digit levels and restoring the flow of rare earth minerals halted by China and Nvidia's H20 AI chips, and other goods halted by the United States.
Among broader economic issues, Washington complains that China's state-led, export-driven model is flooding world markets with cheap goods, while Beijing says US national security export controls on tech goods seek to stunt Chinese growth.
Mr Bessent has already flagged a deadline extension and has said he wants China to rebalance its economy away from exports to more domestic consumption – a decades-long goal for US policymakers.
Analysts say the US-China negotiations are far more complex than those with other Asian countries and will require more time.
China's grip on the global market for rare earth minerals and magnets, used in everything from military hardware to car windshield wiper motors, has proved to be an effective leverage point on US industries. REUTERS
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
12 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Trump's deal-making with other elite US schools scrambles Harvard negotiations
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox WASHINGTON – By the start of last week, Harvard University had signalled its readiness to meet President Donald Trump's demand that it spend US$500 million (S$643 million) to settle its damaging, monthslong battle with the administration and restore its crucial research funding. Then, two days after The New York Times reported that Harvard was open to such a financial commitment, the White House announced a far cheaper deal with Brown University: US$50 million, doled out over a decade, to bolster state workforce development programs. The terms stunned officials at Harvard, who marvelled that another Ivy League school got away with paying so little, according to three people familiar with the deliberations. But Harvard officials also bristled over how their university, after months of work to address antisemitism on campus and with a seeming advantage in its court fight against the government, was facing a demand from Mr Trump to pay 10 times more. The people who discussed the deliberations spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing talks that are supposed to remain confidential. White House officials are dismissive of the comparison between Brown and Harvard, arguing that their grievances against Harvard are more far-reaching, including assertions that the school has yet to do enough to ensure the safety of Jewish students and their claim that the school is flouting the Supreme Court's ruling on race-conscious admissions. 'If Harvard wants the Brown deal, then it has to be like Brown, and I just think it's not,' Ms May Mailman, the top White House official under Mr Stephen Miller who has served as the architect of the administration's crusade against top schools, said in an interview in the West Wing last week. Ms Mailman, who graduated from Harvard Law School, pointed out that Brown, unlike Harvard, did not sue the administration. She challenged Harvard to reach an agreement that included terms that would allow the government to more closely scrutinise its behaviour. 'If Harvard feels really good about what it's already doing, then great,' she said. 'Let's sign this deal tomorrow.' Harvard said on Aug 4 that it had no comment. But the White House's recent record of deal-making threatens to complicate the settlement talks, according to the people familiar with the talks. University officials were sensitive to the possibility that a deal with the government – after Harvard spent months waging a public fight against Mr Trump – would be seen as surrendering to the president and offering him a political gift. The terms of the Brown agreement, though, added new complexity to Harvard's internal debates about the size of a potential financial settlement. For many people close to those discussions, spending US$500 million is less of a concern than what forking that money over would signal on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus and beyond. For those close to the discussions, Mr Trump's demand is far too large and they argue that acquiescing to it would be seen as the university scrambling to buy its way out of Mr Trump's ire. They contend that Harvard has taken far more aggressive steps than Columbia University – which agreed to a US$200 million fine in July – to combat antisemitism. They also note that Harvard, unlike Brown, did not publicly agree to consider divesting from Israel as a condition of ending campus protests lin 2024. (Brown's board ultimately voted not to divest.) Others at Harvard regard Mr Trump's proposal as a bargain for the school to get back billions of dollars in funding that make much of its society-shaping research possible. Before the Brown deal, Harvard leaders and the school's team were studying settlement structures that could insulate the nation's oldest and wealthiest university from accusations that it caved to Mr Trump. In their stop-and-start talks with the White House, they are expected to maintain their insistence on steps to shield the university's academic freedom. To that end, they are also likely to remain equally resistant to a monitoring arrangement that some fear would invite intrusions and stifle the school's autonomy. But Harvard has been exploring a structure in which any money the university agrees to spend will go to vocational and workforce training programs instead of the federal government, Mr Trump, his presidential library or allies, according to the three people briefed on the matter. Harvard officials believe that such an arrangement would allow them to argue to their students, faculty, alumni and others in academia that the funds would not be used to fill Mr Trump's coffers. Harvard's consideration of putting money toward workforce programmes aligns with some of what Mr Trump has espoused. In a social media post in May, the president talked up the prospect of taking US$3 billion from Harvard and 'giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!' But no matter the structure, White House officials have made clear that an extraordinary sum will be required to reach a settlement. Last week, after the Times reported the US$500 million figure, a journalist asked Mr Trump whether that amount would be enough to reach a deal. 'Well, it's a lot of money,' he replied. 'We're negotiating with Harvard.' Although Brown and Harvard are among the nation's richest and most prominent universities, the schools have significant differences, especially around their finances. The Trump administration has repeatedly castigated Harvard for its US$53 billion endowment, which is loaded with restrictions that limit how it may be used, but it has made far less fuss about Brown's similarly tied-up US$7 billion fund. Harvard also has much more federal research money at stake. The Trump administration has warned that it could ultimately strip US$9 billion in funding for Harvard; it threatened US$510 million in funding for Brown. One reason the Brown deal has so miffed Harvard officials is that some terms look much like those they expected for themselves. The government agreed, for instance, that it could not use the deal 'to dictate Brown's curriculum or the content of academic speech.' Brown avoided a monitoring arrangement, and the university won the right to direct its US$50 million settlement payment toward workforce programmes of its choosing. But Harvard has a more antagonistic relationship with the Trump administration, as the university has sued the administration to stop its retribution campaign against the school. That dynamic has fuelled worries at Harvard that the White House is seeking a far higher financial penalty as a punishment for fighting, not because the school's troubles alone warrant US$500 million. After Harvard refused a list of Trump administration demands in April, the university sued. In July, a federal judge in Boston appeared skeptical of the government's tactics when it blocked billions in research funding from Harvard. Before and after the July 21 hearing, the administration pursued a wide-ranging campaign against the university. In addition to its attack on Harvard's research money, the government has opened investigations, sought to block the school from enrolling international students, demanded thousands of documents and tried to challenge the university's accreditation, which is essential for students to be eligible for federal student aid programmes, such as Pell Grants. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services told Harvard that it had referred the university to the Justice Department 'to initiate appropriate proceedings to address Harvard's antisemitic discrimination.' 'Rather than voluntarily comply with its obligations under Title VI, Harvard has chosen scorched-earth litigation against the federal government,' Ms Paula Stannard, the director of the health department's Office for Civil Rights, wrote on July 31, referring to the section of federal civil rights law that bars discrimination on the basis of race, colour or national origin. 'The parties' several months' engagement has been fruitless.' As Harvard President Alan Garber and other university leaders face the White House's fury, they are also confronting campus-level misgivings about a potential deal with a president many at the school see as bent on authoritarianism. At best, many at Harvard view him as duplicitous and believe it would be risky for the university to enter a long-term arrangement. 'I think even the simplest deals with untrustworthy people can be challenging,' said Professor Oliver Hart, an economics professor at Harvard who won a Nobel Prize for his work on contract theory. 'But a continuing relationship is much, much worse, much harder.' Prof Hart warned that, no matter the written terms of a settlement, the federal government would retain enormous power with effectively limitless financial resources to take on Harvard. Ms Mailman, who recently left the full-time White House staff but remains involved in the administration's higher-education strategy, all but dared Harvard to stay defiant. 'I think there's still a deal to be had, but from our perspective, at the end of the day, Harvard has a US$53 billion endowment,' she said. 'They don't need federal funds. And even if they win a lawsuit, great. But what happens next year? What happens the year after?' NYTIMES
AsiaOne
12 minutes ago
- AsiaOne
Trump again threatens India with harsh tariffs over Russian oil purchases, World News
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump again threatened on Monday (Aug 4) to raise tariffs on goods from India over its Russian oil purchases, while New Delhi called his attack "unjustified" and vowed to protect its economic interests, deepening the trade rift between the two countries. In a social media post, Trump wrote, "India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine." "Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA," he added. A spokesperson for India's foreign ministry said in response that India will "take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security." "The targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable," the spokesperson added. Trump has said that from Friday he will impose new sanctions on Russia as well as on countries that buy its energy exports, unless Moscow takes steps to end its 3-1/2 year war with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no public sign of altering his stance despite the deadline. Over the weekend, two Indian government sources told Reuters that India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite Trump's threats. India has faced pressure from the West to distance itself from Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. New Delhi has resisted, citing its longstanding ties with Russia and economic needs. Trump had already in July announced 25 per cent tariffs on Indian imports, and US officials have cited a range of geopolitical issues standing in the way of a US-India trade accord. Trump has also cast the wider BRICS group of developing nations as hostile to the United States. Those nations have dismissed his accusation, saying the group promotes the interests of its members and of developing countries at large. Crude buyer India is the biggest buyer of seaborne crude from Russia, importing about 1.75 million barrels per day of Russian oil from January to June this year, up 1 per cent from a year ago, according to data provided to Reuters by trade sources. [[nid:720925]] India began importing oil from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, the Indian spokesperson said, calling it a "necessity compelled by global market situation." The spokesperson also noted the West's, particularly the European Union's, bilateral trade with Russia: "It is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia." Despite the Indian government's defiance, the country's main refiners paused buying Russian oil last week, sources told Reuters. Discounts to other suppliers narrowed after Trump threatened hefty tariffs on countries that make any such purchases. Indian government officials denied any policy change. The country's largest refiner, Indian Oil Corp, has bought seven million barrels of crude from the United States, Canada and the Middle East, four trade sources told Reuters on Monday. India also has been frustrated by Trump repeatedly taking credit for an India-Pakistan ceasefire that he announced on social media in May, which halted days of hostilities between the nuclear-armed neighbours. The unpredictability of the Trump administration creates a challenge for Delhi, said Richard Rossow, head of the India programme at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "India's continued energy and defence purchases from Russia presents a larger challenge, where India does not feel it can predict how the Trump administration will approach Russia from month to month," he said. [[nid:720581]]
AsiaOne
12 minutes ago
- AsiaOne
Zelenskiy says 'mercenaries' from China, Pakistan and other countries fighting for Russia, World News
KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday (Aug 4) that Ukrainian troops in northeastern Ukraine were fighting foreign "mercenaries" from various countries including China, Pakistan and parts of Africa, and vowed a response. Zelenskiy has previously accused Moscow of recruiting Chinese fighters for its war effort against Ukraine, charges Beijing denied, while North Korea has also provided thousands of its own troops in Russia's Kursk region. "We spoke with commanders about the frontline situation, the defence of Vovchansk, and the dynamics of the battles," Zelenskiy wrote on X after visiting a frontline area in the northeastern Kharkiv region. "Our warriors in this sector are reporting the participation of mercenaries from China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and African countries in the war. We will respond." Reuters contacted the embassies of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan in Kyiv to request comment. Russia did not immediately comment publicly on Zelenskiy's comments. [[nid:720860]]
