Washington may be open to lifting some tariffs on China, Journal says

Washington might be prepared to make concessions of its own should Beijing decide to 'play ball' in upcoming trade talks.

Citing people close to the internal deliberations, overnight the Journal reported that US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, had broached the possibility of offering to dial back on tariffs when negotiators next met on 30 January, in exchange for deeper concessions from Beijing.

In what was described as a series of strategy meetings, it was argued that the aim of such a move would be to advance talks and convince China to embark on longer-term reforms.

On the other hand, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who was leading the talks with China, was reportedly against such a move, arguing that China had fallen short on past pledges and could not be trusted.

So tariffs should only be reversed when China actually moved to meet its part of any bargain.

But Lighthizer had shown some signs of relaxing his position, the Journal said, citing people involved in the talks, including by raising the possibility that some tariffs might be reduced if the US clinched a "favourable" deal on 1 March.

As well, over the past week Chinese commerce ministry officials had made some positive-sounding noises regarding the prospects for a deal being reached.

Should no deal be forthcoming by 1 March, then the current 10% tariff on $200bn-worth of Chinese exports is set to rise to 25%.

During three days of negotiations in early January, Chinese officials offered to increase purchases of US agricultural and energy products, but no firm commitments were reportedly made.

Reacting to the report in the Journal, a US Treasury spokesman reportedly said: "neither Secretary Mnuchin nor Ambassador Lighthizer have made any recommendations to anyone with respect to tariffs or other parts of the negotiation with China," adding that "[talks are] nowhere near completion."