US CHINA Photo: VCG

The US-China Business Council (USCBC) said it is pleased that top leaders of China and the US held their first face-to-face virtual meeting on Tuesday Beijing time and hopes separate meetings will be organized to discuss economic and trade issues between the US and China, including reducing travel restriction and tariffs.

During the meeting on Tuesday top leaders of the two countries discussed trade and economic issues,  with China agreeing to upgrade a "fast-track" arrangement to make it more convenient for the US business community to travel to China. 

"Given that US-China economic and trade ties have been a ballast of the relationship and can help manage strategic risks, we hope separate meetings will be scheduled soon to discuss economic and trade issues with China," said Craig Allen, president of USCBC, in a statement of USCBC on Tuesday.

These issues include moving to future negotiation to reduce US and Chinese tariffs and easing travel restrictions to China.

USCBC is an advocacy organization representing more than 260 member companies that do business in China. On Friday USCBC and 25 other business groups sent a letter to US Secretary Treasury Janet Yellen and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, calling for reducing the Section 301 tariffs and broadening the tariff exclusion process.

The letter said that American importers have paid over $110 billion in Section 301 China tariffs since their inception, about $40 billion of which has been assessed during the Biden Administration. 

"These costs, compounded by other inflationary pressures, impose a significant burden on American businesses, farmers, and families trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic," read the letter.

Maintaining normalized economic and trade cooperation has always been the requirement of the US business community, however, the wrong practices of some US political figures who attempted to fuel the US economic growth and employment at the expense of curbing China's development, have disrupted normal trade exchanges and placed pressured on the US economy, analysts, said.

It is expected that the exchanges between economic and trade officials from the two sides will accelerate, and a number of added US tariffs on China will be cancelled. However, the US still needs to make more effort to fully normalize economic and trade cooperation between the two countries, Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"The US side will not abandon the added tariffs easily, but will exchange the cancellation of tariffs for other commercial interests, such as requiring China to purchase US agricultural products, energy and large aircraft," Dong said. 

"It should be noted that the trade between China and US should be equal and mutually beneficial. We should open up, and so should the US. At the same time, the US should abandon its long arm jurisdiction and unreasonable restriction and suppression of Chinese high-tech enterprises," Dong said.

According to USCBC, exports to China support roughly one million American jobs, with China ranking as the US' third-largest trading partner.

Bilateral trade increased 33.4 percent year-on-year to reach $66.794 billion from January to October, the growth rate dropped, compared with a 35.4-percent growth from January to September, according to Chinese customs data. 

Global Times