US Within 'Final Weeks' of Reaching China Deal or Walking Away, Says USTR
The U.S. could well be within weeks of reaching a comprehensive, "structural" trade accord with China or walking away from the negotiations empty-handed, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday. Lighthizer declined repeatedly, as he did at a House Ways and Means hearing two weeks ago (see 1902270047), to commit publicly whether a deal hinges on lifting the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports or keeping them in place to force China's compliance.
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Lighthizer hopes “we’re in the final weeks of having an agreement, but I’m not predicting one,” he told Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. “There still are major, major issues that have to be resolved, and if those issues are not resolved in a way that’s beneficial to the United States, we will not have an agreement.” The U.S. team is “working hard and we have made real progress” with the Chinese, he said. To Hassan’s question if the talks were fast reaching “an end point, one way or the other,” Lighthizer replied: “I think that’s correct, yes.”
The U.S. "before too long" will have either "a good result or we’re going to have a bad result,” Lighthizer told Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “The president will tell me when the time is up, or the Chinese will.” The talks involve many “very, very complicated issues,” making it difficult to predict an outcome or the timing, he said. “If we have an agreement, it’ll be 110, 120 pages. It’s very, very detailed, very specific.”
Ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Lighthizer if it’s his “intent” to keep the tariffs in place as a deterrent in any deal against Chinese violations. Wyden's strong preference, he said, is for the U.S. not to lift the tariffs until it sees “real evidence on the ground” that the Chinese are complying. “That’s the subject of negotiations, so I’m not getting into it here in public,” said Lighthizer. He offered again and again to brief Wyden and other senators privately.
Lighthizer assured Wyden that President Donald Trump won’t sign an agreement that isn’t enforceable. “We have to maintain the right -- whatever happens to the current tariffs -- to raise tariffs in situations where there’s violations of the agreement,” he said. “That’s the core. If we don’t do that, then none of it makes any difference.”
The USTR’s refusal to openly discuss the negotiations sparked Hassan to protest that the talks lacked “transparency” for New Hampshirites back home. What would Lighthizer say to businesses in her state, she asked, that face "critical" investment and supply-chain decisions, yet know little about the "status" or "content" of a trade deal with China and its future tariff implications?
“I’m sympathetic to people in the real world who have to deal with these matters,” said Lighthizer, to Hassan’s apparent scorn. “Sympathy doesn’t go very far,” she said. “I’m talking about transparency in a process that would allow the American people and American businesses to understand where we are with this.”
Lighthizer still wouldn’t budge on confidentiality. “We’re involved in a negotiation,” he said. “It’s not going to be any more transparent than it is. It’s just the nature of a negotiation. It’s not something you can negotiate with another country in public.”