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U.S. and Chinese officials continued trade talks on Sept. 14 in a meeting at the Palacio de Santa Cruz in Madrid.
On the agenda are the new
tariffs the administration wants to levy on the Chinese communist regime over its purchase of
sanctioned Russian oil, the looming deadline for Chinese company ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok, and Chinese money laundering.
On the U.S. side, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are returning for talks. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and Ministry of Commerce official Li Chenggang are representing Beijing’s interests.
Chinese imports currently face an
average tariff of 52 percent, with various sectors and products receiving
exemptions.
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares publicly greeted the two delegations before the start of talks.
Spain has come under U.S. criticism recently, as the peninsula nation announced it would
limit access to Spanish ports and airspace by planes carrying weapons for Israel, which may limit U.S. access in the region. President Donald Trump also criticized Spain for not reaching the 5 percent defense spending goal he set for NATO members.
Meanwhile, the Spanish prime minister has traveled to China three times in the past three years and ignored calls to tighten European access to Chinese electric vehicles.
Russia Looms Large
Russia’s war efforts will play a major role in the discussion, as Beijing has ignored calls from the United States to stop buying Russian oil, selling weapons to Russia, and otherwise assisting Russia in avoiding international sanctions by purchasing supplies for reshipment to Russia or purchasing Russian goods to resell on the international market.
The Treasury Department has said it will demand that the Chinese regime stop its illegal technology shipments to Russia.
Bessent and Greer recently held a video conference with G7 nations, calling on them to
impose “meaningful tariffs” on China and India over the purchase of Russian oil.
“Only with a unified effort that cuts off the revenues funding Putin’s war machine at the source will we be able to apply sufficient economic pressure to end the senseless killing,” Bessent and Greer said in a statement on Sept. 12.
On Sept. 13, Trump said on social media that he would impose “major sanctions” on Russia if NATO countries could agree to also stop buying Russian oil.
“Anyway, I am ready to ‘go’ when you are,“ he wrote. ”Just say when?”
TikTok
Both sides have said that the question of TikTok’s future is also on the agenda.
After President Joe Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban law, the firm’s Chinese parent company was given until Jan. 19, the last day of Biden’s term, to divest itself of the popular social media app. A court granted a delay, given that Trump was assuming office the day after the deadline.
Since then, Trump has extended the divestiture deadline several times.
In June, he
signed another executive order to keep TikTok “up and running.”
The president has expressed confidence in securing an American buyer for the app. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, previously said the Chinese regime would not allow it to sell.
“We probably have to get China approval. I think we'll get it,” Trump
told reporters on Air Force One, as he traveled back from the G7 summit in Canada in June.
“I think [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] will ultimately approve it.”
TikTok came under the scrutiny of federal regulators because of the massive volume of data it collects on Americans, which, under Chinese national security laws, it must make accessible to Chinese authorities without disclosure.
Fourth Round in Europe
This is the fourth time this year the parties have met in the attempt to reach a trade agreement.
In July, the parties
met in Stockholm, where Bessent said both parties presented “tough” terms but expressed optimism for a deal. An extension for the upcoming Aug. 12 deadline was not agreed on during the meeting, but Trump later
announced another 90-day extension just before the deadline.
In June, the parties
met for two days in London, with the discussion focusing on the critical mineral shipments China had slow-walked.
In May, U.S. and Chinese trade officials
spoke by phone but gave few specifics.
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On May 12, the parties met for the first time since the April tariff war, in Geneva. The parties announced a 90-day truce, but Trump later said that China had “totally” reneged on the deal by refusing to export critical minerals, which had resulted in a halt of some auto production lines.
China Export Controls
Beijing has accused the United States of “abuse” of export controls, saying it will raise the issue during the Madrid talks.
China has imposed several of its own export controls since the Trump administration announced its tariffs.
Days ahead of the talks, Beijing opened an anti-discrimination investigation into U.S. trade policy. This came after the communist regime
revised its Foreign Trade Law, which codifies and supplies a rationale for such trade actions as its earlier blockage of critical mineral exports and its trade bans on entities it deems a threat to its security.
The Chinese regime has also opened an anti-dumping investigation regarding U.S. computer chips as it seeks to
reduce its dependency on U.S. chips in its supply chain. The United States is making it
harder for China to obtain technologies to develop its chip industry, tightening export controls across the supply chain.
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Reuters contributed to this report.
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