US trade chief to unveil Biden administration’s China trade policy

US trade representative Katherine Tai is set to unveil the Biden administration's much-anticipated strategy for the US-China trade relationship on Monday, her office said.

Tai will deliver a speech at the Center for Strategic Studies, a Washington-based think tank, on the US government’s China trade policy, and participate in an interactive session.

Since assuming her office in March, Tai has been busy reconfiguring Washington's China trade policy.

In an event in May, she said that she expects to engage "in the near term" with Chinese officials to assess their implementation of the "Phase 1" trade deal between the two countries, which will influence Washington's punitive tariffs on Beijing.

Biden administration has kept in place tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports imposed by his predecessor, Donald Trump, who launched a tariff war against China in 2018.

Trump administration imposed tariffs on more than $360bn (£268bn) of Chinese goods, and China retaliated with tariffs on more than $110bn of US products.

The two countries signed the Phase 1 trade deal in January 2020 in a bid to ease tensions.

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Tai's speech on Monday will mark the start of the final three months of the "Phase 1" US-China trade deal, easing a tariff war between the world's two largest economies.

In an interview on Thursday, Tai said the Biden administration plans to “build on” existing tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese imports and confront Beijing for failing to fulfill its obligations under a Trump-brokered trade agreement.

“I think it’s going to be important to review China's performance with China, and that's going to be the critical first step in my mind,” Tai said of the two-year deal.

The deal has called for China to boost purchases of US farm and manufactured goods, energy and services by $200 billion over the two years to the end of 2021 compared to 2017 levels.

Chad Bown, a senior fellow at Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, says China's purchases of US exports through August are running at about 62% of the Phase 1 targets.

“Through August 2021, China's total imports of covered products from the United States were $89.4 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $129.9 billion. Over the same period, US exports to China of covered products were $70.6 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $113.0 billion,” he wrote in an article.

In their first telephonic conversations in seven months, Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping spoke earlier this month, with focus on finding a way forward in their strained ties.

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Initiated by US President Joe Biden, it was only the second call between the two leaders since Biden took over from his predecessor Donald Trump earlier this year.

The White House said the two leaders had a “broad, strategic discussion in which they discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge.”

Relations between the two countries have been marked by heightened tensions in recent years, with clashes on issues like trade, pandemic, and regional interference.

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