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.

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  • CurlyWurlies4All
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    18 days ago

    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.

    • @zephorah@lemm.ee
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      1918 days ago

      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.

      • enkers
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        918 days ago

        Sure, but now the shit-taker wants a favour from the shit-reciever who is having none of it until the shit is cleaned up. So now we get to watch the shit-taker squirm and writhe while they try to figure out how to untake their shit without looking like the complete idiot that they clearly are.

  • @Dotcom@lemmy.ml
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    2718 days ago

    Sure seems like the “great negotiator” is the one who is having to answer demands

  • @Wilco@lemm.ee
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    1718 days ago

    Now Trump has a lever to pull for more insider trading. He will let the economy crumble for a while longer, then tell his friends “now is the time to invest” and then agree to remove all tariffs a few hours later. Then the economy will recover sharply from the insider trading spike and fall again when these vulture capitalists are done.

  • @jballs@sh.itjust.works
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    1318 days ago

    Trump has since begun to soften some of the measures, granting exemptions for smartphones, semiconductors and electronics and claiming the US and China were in direct contact “every day”.

    On Tuesday, the president said tariffs would come down “substantially” and a deal would be done “pretty quickly”.

    But the Chinese foreign ministry on said any reports that China and the US were nearing a deal were “fake news”.

    “There have been no consultations or negotiations between China and the United States regarding tariffs, let alone reaching an agreement,” said ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun.

    This is classic Trump. Lie about how easy something will be and how great he’s making things, all while delivering horse shit and counting on your supporters to be too dumb to listen to what’s actually going on.

  • @nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    518 days ago

    Good. Someone should negotiate with the Republicans the way that they want to negotiate with everybody else. That is, we’ll only talk if we get what we want up front.