US scholars, business insiders urge US, China to resume trade negotiation amid growth worries

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, August 26, 2019
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A cargo ship is seen at an ore dock of Qinhuangdao Port in north China's Hebei Province, Jan. 14, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]

U.S. scholars and business professionals have called on the United States and China to go back to the negotiating table and resume their conversations in concerted efforts to resolve the recent escalation of the U.S.-initiated trade war.

Back to negotiating table

"My hope is that the two sides will sit down and negotiate solutions to their differences," said Carla A. Hills, chairman and CEO of Hills & Company, a Washington-based advisory firm on trade and investment.

"The ongoing conflict is harmful to both sides," noted Hills, also a former U.S. trade representative, in an interview with Xinhua on Friday.

Referring to China's countermeasures as "appropriate responses," Jeffrey Sachs, a senior United Nations advisor and economics professor at Columbia University, said that "the main goal of all countries should be to stop the U.S. protectionism and violation of the WTO (World Trade Organization) rules and for all nations to live within the rules of the multilateral trading system under the WTO."

The United States should change course and uphold the consensus reached between Beijing and Washington at the Osaka Group of 20 (G20) summit, Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua.

"Washington must at minimum reverse the steps that it has taken ... and go back to uphold the (two) heads of state consensus reached at the Osaka G20," said Gupta, calling for sincere and trustworthy bilateral conversations.

He noted that the consensus could create "the essential basis for forming trust between the two sides," and help to "strike a more broad-based deal related to their structural trade impediments."

To that end, the U.S. government must have its sincerity and trust verified, the senior China watcher said, urging that "Washington must match word with deed."

"Without sincerity and trust, no negotiations can be expected to succeed," he said.

"Neither my clients, friends nor I want to see U.S.-China ties deteriorate. We call on the two sides to go back to the negotiating table as soon as possible," Steven Gu, board treasurer of the Tennessee-based business group TN-China Network, told Xinhua on Saturday.

"U.S.-China trade ties have been lasting for four decades," he noted. "We believe continued, constructive and mutually beneficial cooperation should be a right path for the two nations to develop."

Concerns over economic growth

The experts also expressed grave angst that deteriorating U.S.-China trade frictions would sap global economic growth and fuel volatilities rippling through the global market.

"I believe we all should be concerned that the escalating trade war will not only harm the U.S. and the Chinese economies but will have an adverse effect on the global economy," Hills said.

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