Beginning of the end of trade war good for all
Many are debating whether the China-US agreement reached at their trade talks in Geneva, Switzerland, over the weekend and taking effect on Wednesday is a win for China or the United States.
The White House fact sheet on the talks claims that US President Donald Trump "secures a historic trade win" for the US. But some US news media outlets said it's a win for China. Even former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers said on X that Trump "blinked first".
These people are all wrong. The agreement, which may begin the end of this round of trade conflicts, will be a win-win for China, the US and the rest of the world.
Since the global economy, especially the Asia-Pacific region's economy, is highly integrated, a suspension of the tariff war between China and the US means good news for traders, manufacturers, investors, retailers and consumers across the world. The decision arrived at by the world's two largest economies to drop the tariffs by 115 percent has already raised stock markets' indexes in the US and the Asia-Pacific.
The optimism is evident in the news headlines. A CNBC report on Tuesday read: "US-China tariff reprieve is enough to get products on the shelves in time for Christmas", while a CNN headline on Wednesday said: "Tariffs devastated America's ports. Soon, they could face a surge from stockpiling".
There is hope that the 90-day reprieve could be extended permanently. And as proved by the huge economic damage the tariff war has inflicted on the US, China and other economies over the past months, trade and tariff wars produce no winners and should never be launched.
The outcome of the trade talks is encouraging given the high tensions that preceded the talks and the relatively low expectation by the US news media and pundits.
As a journalist who covered the proceedings in Geneva, the outcome came as a delightful surprise to me as I listened to Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng speaking at the Sunday evening press conference, and the talk on TV by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
It has been long since government officials from the two countries praised each other for their professionalism, diligence and competence due to the toxic rhetoric of the Joe Biden administration. It has also been long since both sides claimed their talks had made substantial progress, leading to some important consensuses.
It was especially comforting to see the two sides agreeing to launch a consultation mechanism on trade and economic issues to address each other's concerns. It reminds people of the 90 high-level dialogue mechanisms that existed between the two governments several years ago, from the Strategic and Economic Dialogue to the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, which I covered extensively during my more than eight years of assignment in the US.
Those mechanisms played a great role in enhancing exchanges and communication between the two governments and in addressing bilateral concerns. Many of them could and should be revived as part of the new mechanism to be established.
Back in December, then US president-elect Trump told a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that "China and the United States could work together to solve all the problems of the world". That is true especially when it comes to addressing global challenges — from maintaining global economic stability and prosperity to fighting terrorism, combating climate change and ensuring global peace.
But to achieve that, it is imperative that China and the US resolve their differences and disputes through the new mechanism of consultation instead of resorting to tit-for-tat trade and tariff wars. The Geneva talks were a good start for the two sides to put bilateral relations on the right track.
As Chinese leaders and diplomats have repeatedly said, cooperation is in the interest of both China and the US while confrontation hurts both. There is no better option for the two sides than cooperation.
The author is chief of China Daily EU Bureau based in Brussels.
