China: ‘Trade war has not made America great again’ says Beijing
A deputy minister of the Chinese government sharply criticised the Trump administration’s role in stalled trade negotiations, accusing the US of “trade bullying” and of “throwing mud at China.” The remarks were made during a press conference in Beijing on Sunday, after months of increasing tensions and heated rhetoric between the two countries.
“The trade war has not “made America great again” and has instead increased production costs for US companies,” said Guo Weimin, Vice Minister of the State Council Information Office (SCIO), the main information office of the Chinese government.
“Trade bullying by the US has affected the whole world, undermined the multilateral trading system, seriously disrupted the global industrial and supply chain, undermined market confidence, posed severe challenges to global economic recovery and posed a major threat to the trend of economic globalization.”
“The US side accused the Chinese side of backsliding in the negotiations, which is irresponsible and throwing mud at China,” added Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen. “If one side does not respect the sovereignty and core interests of the other side and tries to pressure the other side into making concessions in order to achieve a result beneficial to only one side, such negotiations cannot succeed.”
The United States filed a WTO case against China in March 2018 and started imposing tariffs on imports from China in July 2018, which have since added up to an estimated $250 billion (€223 billion).
Tensions grew with the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada in December, and the US placing Huawei on a blacklist in May, banning the Chinese tech company from buying US-made components, shutting it out of infrastructure projects, and notably causing Google to revoke the smartphone giant’s access to Android services.
The Chinese government has since announced it would put together an “unreliable entities list” which many see as retaliation against the Huawei ban.
China: ‘Trade war has not made America great again’ says Beijing