Trump Economic adviser Larry Kudlow said a meeting could take place when policy makers meet in Buenos Aires for the Group of 20 meeting.
Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said at a securities industry conference in Washington that no formal plans have been made to resume talks, but said U.S. officials are ready to negotiate as long as the conversations are serious, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“The great hope here is that China will come to the table and start playing by the rules,” said Kudlow, who worked as Reagan’s budget deputy between 1981 and 1985. He added so far the talks “have been unsatisfactory from our point of view.”
Kudlow said U.S. officials remain concerned about a number of trade barriers in China, including tariffs, joint ownership requirements for American companies, and “the theft of intellectual property.”
Speaking about the newly announced trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Mr. Kudlow said the agreement will allow the three countries to present a “united front” against unfair trading practices.
Also Tuesday, Kudlow said:
- Trump plans to host executives of internet and social media companies at the White House, likely later this month, Reuters reported. Kudlow said Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has committed to coming back to the White House for a tech conference. “We’re going to have a little conference - the president will preside over it - we will have big internet companies, big social media companies, search companies,” he said. “And some who are dissatisfied with those companies.”
- More people working and prospering is not inflationary in response to massive pay raises announced by Amazon, the Associated Press reported. He's in favor of higher wages and said, "Good for them," Kudlow told CNBC, in reference to the pay hike announced Tuesday by the Seattle company. Amazon is boosting its minimum wage for all U.S. workers to $15 per hour starting next month and it will raise pay for employees who make more than that already. The pay increases will benefit more than 350,000 people. Kudlow was referring to "wage push" inflation, when the cost of goods increase as employers raise prices to pay workers more.
Meanwhile, trade experts said China’s hopes of negotiating a free trade pact with Canada or Mexico were dealt a sharp setback by a provision deep in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that aims to forbid such deals with “non-market” countries, Reuters reported.
The provision specifies that if one of the current North American Free Trade Agreement partners enters a free trade deal with a “non-market” country such as China, the others can quit in six months and form their own bilateral trade pact.
The clause, which has stirred controversy in Canada, fits in with U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to isolate China economically and prevent Chinese companies from using Canada or Mexico as a “back door” to ship products tariff-free to the United States.
The United States and China are locked in a spiraling trade war that has seen them level increasingly severe rounds of tariffs on each other’s imports.
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