Biden Says He Won’t Soon Remove Trump’s Tariffs on China

What’s new: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said he won’t immediately remove the tariffs imposed on China by the Trump administration under the phase-one trade deal, according to New York Times.

“I’m not going to make any immediate moves, and the same applies to the tariffs,” Biden said in an interview with columnist Thomas Friedman.

Biden said he would first conduct a full review of the phase-one deal and speak with key allies in Asia and Europe to "develop a coherent strategy.”

“The best China strategy, I think, is one which gets every one of our — or at least what used to be our — allies on the same page,” Biden said. “It’s going to be a major priority for me in the opening weeks of my presidency to try to get us back on the same page with our allies.”

What’s the context: Trade battles between China and the U.S. under the Trump administration came to a pause when the two countries signed the phase-one trade deal in January, halting further tariff hikes but leaving earlier punitive levies largely in place.

Many say they expect the Biden administration to bring some stabilization to bilateral relations between the world’s two largest economies. But some say changes won't come immediately.

Lou Jiwei, a former Chinese finance minister, said at the Caixin Summit last month that China-U.S. relations won’t significantly improve in the short term even if Biden brings an end to the trade war.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson suggested the new administration start a new round of negotiations with China. The U.S. should consider removing tariffs on goods from the Asian nation once it has extracted reciprocal and tangible benefits from China, defined by benchmarks in a phased bilateral trade agreement, Paulson said.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (bobsimison@caixin.com).

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