China preparing for 'no deal' on trade China has prepared contingency plans in case of a no-deal scenario on a trade pact with the United States, officials familiar with the talks said.
This includes putting American companies on its unreliable entity list and stimulating the economy.
After a weekend of confusing signals, US President Donald Trump's credibility has become a key obstacle for China to reach a lasting deal with the United States.
Only a few negotiators in Beijing see a deal as actually possible ahead of the 2020 US election, they said, in part because it's dangerous for any official to advise President Xi Jinping to sign a deal that Trump may eventually break.
In off-the-cuff remarks to reporters at the Group of Seven summit in France on Monday, Trump claimed that Chinese officials called "our top trade people" and said "let's get back to the table."
In subsequent appearances he portrayed the outreach as evidence China was desperate to make a deal: "They've been hurt very badly, but they understand this is the right thing to do."
It momentarily boosted stocks, but nobody in Beijing officialdom appeared to know what he was talking about. Even worse, his efforts to depict China as caving in negotiations confirmed some of their worst fears about Trump: that he can't be trusted to cut a deal.
"Trump's flip flop has further enlarged the distrust," said Tao Dong, vice chairman for Greater China at Credit Suisse Private Banking in Hong Kong.
China's foreign ministry on Tuesday again said it was unaware of the phone calls mentioned by Trump, reiterating a statement immediately after his remarks. Hu Xijin, chief editor at the Global Times newspaper, said that the US president was exaggerating the significance of low-level talks and China's position hadn't changed.
While Beijing officials are still willing to engage in trade talks, they are concurrently girding for a decoupling from the world's biggest economy - an effort made all the more acute when Trump "ordered" US companies via Twitter to look for alternatives to China.
Source: The Standard
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-n ... 0829&sid=2
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"