U.S.-China Trade Talks End. Now High-Level Talks Can Begin. – The New York Times

The Commerce Department, which oversees American export promotion activities overseas, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have been pushing since the early days of the administration for a deal that would require China to buy more food, natural gas and other products from the United States. Beijing officials have been happy to go along, as their country is short on arable land and gas, and long-term purchase agreements fit easily into the Chinese government’s economic planning model.

The Treasury Department, under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, has been pushing for a quick deal that would stop further increases in American tariffs. But Treasury would preserve indefinitely the 25 percent tariffs that President Trump imposed last July and August on $50 billion a year in Chinese-made goods, or roughly a tenth of American imports, and the 10 percent tariffs that he imposed in September on another $200 billion in Chinese goods.

That first set of tariffs cover several categories in which China does not export much now but plans to do so in the next several years. The most important products covered by the 25 percent tariffs are gasoline-powered and electric cars. At least six Chinese automakers have announced plans to start exporting cars to the United States in 2020, said Michael Dunne, the chief executive of Zozo Go, an automotive consulting firm specializing in China.

“Import duties will slow — but not stop — Chinese automakers’ plans to enter the U.S.,” he said. “With a slowing home market, pressure to export has never been greater.”

Democrats and Republicans alike have been wary of allowing an influx of Chinese cars in an election year, particularly when manufacturing states like Indiana, Michigan Ohio and Wisconsin have been among the main electoral battlegrounds in recent decades.

In the latest sign that the Chinese economy could use a lift from a trade agreement, officials announced Wednesday evening that car sales plummeted 19 percent last month from a year earlier, the steepest such decline in modern record-keeping in China.

President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China agreed in Buenos Aires on Dec. 1 to a temporary truce that would keep last summer’s American tariffs in place and suspend much of China’s retaliation for those tariffs, but had few other details. So the quickest possible deal in the coming weeks could be to make that arrangement more permanent.