 "The AI-generated image shows flags of the United States and China. (Representational Image)")
The US-China trade talks will resume on Friday at Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who has been the lead negotiator for his country, will hold talks with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from October 24 to 27, Bloomberg reported Chinese commerce ministry as saying on Thursday.
These talks will take place at a time when the trade truce reached earlier this year has failed and the two sides are again locked in a retaliatory spiral. US President Donald Trump has vowed to slap 100 per cent additional tariff on China after China imposed curbs on export of rare earth elements and magnets. He has also announced a vague threat to cut China’s access to Western software required for critical industries.
Ahead of their in-person meeting in Malaysia, He and Bessent held talks over phone last week.
He & Bessent to try to salvage Trump-Xi summit
He and Bessent face the task of bringing normality to the US-China trade relationship and salvaging the summit meeting of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in South Korea on November 1.
With the threat of 100 per cent tariffs on China, Trump had also said he could cancel the summit with Xi.
Even though Trump has asserted bravado lately, there are clear signs that China has upper hands in the ongoing trade war. Analysts have also said that China has essentially already won the trade war on the back of its dominance of rare earth supplies.
ALSO READ: Has Trump already lost his tariff-trade war with China?
China controls around 90 per cent of the world’s rare earths’ production. These elements and magnets made from these elements are essential to almost everything in modern life from mobiles phones to cars and fighter planes and missiles. In the absence of Chinese supplies, the US could run out of rare earths in weeks and that could bring several manufacturing industries to a halt.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“We are days, if not weeks, away from a crisis,” Neha Mukherjee, a rare earths research manager at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told ANI.
Mukherjee said the defence industry will be hit the hardest, followed by e-mobility, consumer electronics and robotics.