The US and China held talks on Thursday to help resolve the trade war between the world’s two largest economies, Donald Trump has said.
“We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China,” the US president told reporters at the White House.
China earlier hit back against Mr Trump’s previous claim to be close to a trade deal with Beijing.
Mr Trump had buoyed markets by suggesting on Wednesday that the US was “actively” negotiating with Beijing, and pointing to hopes of a deal that would “substantially” reduce tariffs, now set at 145 per cent, on goods coming into the US from China.
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The Chinese commerce ministry’s spokesperson He Yadong said there were “currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States”.
“Any claims about progress in China-US economic and trade negotiations are baseless rumours without factual evidence,” he said, adding that if the US wanted “de-escalation” it should “completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures against China and find a way to resolve differences through equal dialogue”.
Earlier this month Beijing retaliated against Mr Trump’s tariffs by imposing a 125 per cent tariff in turn, a situation that Mr Trump’s Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, described as unsustainable, saying it amounted in effect to a trade embargo.
The director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, used a press conference in Washington on Thursday to call for a truce in the escalating trade conflict, to limit the damage to the global economy.
She declined to criticise the US administration directly but said “major trade policy shifts” had “spiked uncertainty off the charts”.
“A trade policy settlement among the main players is essential and we are urging them to do it swiftly, because uncertainty is very costly,” she said.
“I cannot stress this strongly enough: without certainty, businesses do not invest, households prefer to save rather than to spend, and this further weakens prospects for already weakened growth.”
Mr Trump and his team have repeatedly highlighted the number of countries that are keen to strike trade deals since his “liberation day” tariffs were imposed and then partly paused earlier this month. No deal has yet been signed.
The IMF downgraded its forecasts this week for global economic growth and warned of further downside risks if the trade war escalated.
“Simply put, the world economy is facing a new and major test,” Ms Georgieva said. -the Guardian
