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Senior Treasury officials are holding a final round of talks with a new round of economic volatility on the horizon.
Alan Rappeport traveled to China twice with Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen for economic talks.
Dec. 11, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET
The Biden administration is making a final push to reinforce the communication channels it established between the United States and China before the relationship between the world’s largest economies potentially faces fresh upheaval when President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office next month.
A team of senior Treasury Department officials will travel to Nanjing, China, this week for a final meeting of the U.S.-China financial working group. A separate group of Treasury officials will convene with their Chinese counterparts on the sidelines of a Group of 20 gathering in South Africa this week for a meeting of the bilateral economic working group. The working groups were formed in 2023 as a way to prevent tension between the U.S. and China from devolving into economic warfare.
The officials are expected to discuss a familiar range of issues that have been on the table since the new structure for economic dialogue was created last year. The United States is expected to raise its continued concerns about China’s excess production of green energy technology, which is flooding global markets. Treasury officials are also expected to raise issues with China’s recent restrictions on exports of critical minerals and the support that Chinese firms have been providing to Russia in its war against Ukraine.
“The United States and China are the two largest economies on the globe, and the American people expect that we should be able to communicate directly with Chinese officials on both areas where we agree and especially on areas where we don’t,” said Jay Shambaugh, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for international affairs, who will be participating in the meetings.
Despite the warmer tone between the two countries, most of the Biden administration’s warnings about China flooding global markets with cheap solar panels and electric vehicles have gone unheeded. There has also been no indication that Chinese firms have stopped helping Russia access the technology that it needs to restock its military. And the U.S. and China have continued to ratchet up protectionist measures.
The Biden administration opted this year to maintain the tariffs that the Trump administration had imposed on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports and announced new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors and advanced batteries.
