WASHINGTON : Having waited eight months for U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai's promised"top-to-bottom" policy review of trade with China, some U.S. industries and experts were complaining over the plan's lack of specifics on negotiations or timing.
Tai will leave in place most of Trump's controversial tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods as she launches discussions with her counterpart, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. She will raise U.S. concerns about China's industrial subsidies, but did not outline specific plans to tackle Beijing's policies that the U.S. believes undermine free trade.
Tai's speech, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, won support from Democratic lawmakers, unions as well as a former Trump administration trade official. The US-China Business Council said it feared tariffs might become permanent, given the lack of any clear road map. The National Foreign Trade Council called for a"robust" tariff exclusion process to provide some relief for companies hammered by the U.S.-China trade war.
How those discussions unfold depends in part on"how much traction we get with China and to what degree we have to take our own measures to defend our interests," Tai said.
Blaming China for the plight of American workers? Better to have the gaze be on a foreign scapegoat than to raise any expectation for action from a gridlocked Washington.