MALIPO, China: China has full confidence in its ability to manage US trade issues, Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying said on Friday, a day before officials from both sides are set to meet in Switzerland to discuss the tariffs they have imposed on each other.
“We have no fear,” Hua told a small group of reporters at a middle school in a rural county in southwestern China, adding that the trade policy of the US administration cannot be sustained.
The weekend talks involving top US and Chinese economic and trade officials are widely seen as a first step toward resolving a trade war that has disrupted the global economy. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the US tariffs on Beijing of 145 percent would likely come down.
“We have full confidence,” Hua said during a Beijing-organized trip to Malipo county to showcase China’s efforts to build up rural economies.
“We do not want any kind of war with any country. But we have to face up to the reality. As you can see, people have full confidence in our capability to overcome all the difficulties.”
Trump’s tariffs on many of the United States’ trading partners, including China, are increasingly weighing on a world economy which for decades had benefited from predictable and relatively free trade.
Many economists are calling the Trump tariffs a “demand shock” to the world economy which, by making imports more expensive for American businesses and consumers, will sap activity elsewhere.
“What the United States is doing cannot be sustained,” Hua said. “Ordinary people in the US already feel suffering from the tariff war.”
The US administration will come back to “normal,” she said.

China can play hardball at looming trade talks with US, analysts say

A formidable set of cards that includes granting access to its vast market and an ability to withstand economic pain will allow Beijing to play hardball in upcoming trade talks with the United States in Geneva, analysts say.
Trade between the world’s two largest economies has nearly skidded to a halt since US President Donald Trump slapped China with various rounds of levies that began as retaliation for Beijing’s alleged role in a devastating fentanyl crisis.
With additional measures justified by Trump as efforts to rebalance the trade relationship and prevent the United States from being “ripped off,” tariffs on many Chinese products now reach as high as 145 percent — with cumulative duties on some goods soaring to a staggering 245 percent.
Beijing has responded with 125 percent tariffs on US imports, along with other measures targeting American firms.
But after weeks of tit-for-tat escalation that sent global markets into a tailspin, the two powers will meet this weekend for a chance to break the ice.
Washington has said it’s not expecting a “big trade deal” that could address Trump’s longstanding complaint about the major goods imbalance with the export powerhouse — but it is hoping the two sides can at least begin to de-escalate tensions.
Beijing has vowed to stick to its guns and insisted its demand that all US tariffs be lifted remains “unchanged.”
Analysts say, however, China is in no major rush to make a deal.
“Beijing can impose some pain on the United States,” Chong Ja Ian, associate professor of political science at National University of Singapore, told AFP.
China’s core strengths going into the talks are its huge domestic market, as well as “key technologies and control of a significant proportion of processed rare earth minerals,” Chong said.
Compared to its approach during Trump’s first term, Beijing’s response to his tariffs this time has been “more mature,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
“There’s no wild bluster,” he explained.
“I think they have learnt from their earlier responses and they know that they cannot be led by the nose,” he said.
Analysts say China has been able to take more of a hard-line posture to Trump’s tariffs this time, despite its struggling economy.
“It still has meaningful retaliatory tools and — just as important — staying power,” said Lizzi Lee from the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
China’s autocratic system, she said, allowed it “to absorb economic pain in ways democracies often cannot.”
Beijing has also concurrently launched a charm offensive aimed at tightening trade ties in Southeast Asia and Europe — positioning itself as a more stable and reliable partner in contrast to the mercurial Trump administration.
That move allowed Beijing to “build buffers” against trade war vicissitudes, Lee said.
“It won’t replace the US market overnight, but every incremental diversification reduces exposure and increases negotiating room,” she added.
That’s not to say China isn’t hurting.
Sales of Chinese goods to the US last year totalled more than $500 billion — 16.4 percent of the country’s exports, according to Beijing’s customs data.
But as the effects of the trade war sunk in, China’s factory activity shrank in April, with Beijing blaming a “sharp shift” in the global economy.
While not as colossal as China’s export levels, US shipments to the country last year were a considerable $143.5 billion, according to the US Trade Representative website.
“Even in the case that one of the two countries would clearly have ‘the upper hand’, it is still worse off economically than before the trade war started,” said Teeuwe Mevissen, senior China economist at Rabobank.
Beijing and Washington have “found out that it is not so easy to fully decouple.”
Policymakers this week unveiled measures to boost domestic consumption — a sign that leaders are “not panicking but feeling some pressure,” said Shehzad Qazi, managing director of China Beige Book.
Beijing will need to strap in for potentially long and drawn-out negotiations with Washington that could bring “much more volatility along the way,” said Qazi.
Analysts broadly agree that upcoming talks are a first step toward a de-escalation of tensions that could, a long way down the line, lead to a lifting of tariffs.
“A best-case scenario would be agreement around a process to enter future negotiations,” Ryan Hass, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told AFP.
Beijing could insist on receiving the same 90-day waiver on tariffs that other countries had received, he suggested.
And China’s insistence that the Switzerland talks came at the request of Washington suggests it is the United States that is desperate for a deal, said Dan Wang, China Director at the Eurasia Group.
“The fact that it is happening is showing some concessions already on the US side.”

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, to be the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital after abandoning his first pick for the job.
Pirro, who joined Fox News in 2006, cohosts the network’s show “The Five” on weekday evenings. She was elected as a judge in New York’s Westchester County Court in 1990 before serving three terms as the county’s elected district attorney.
Trump tapped Pirro to at least temporarily lead the nation’s largest US Attorney’s office after pulling his nomination of conservative activist Ed Martin Jr. for the position earlier Thursday. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was naming Pirro as the interim US attorney in Washington, D.C., but didn’t indicate whether he would nominate her for the Senate-confirmed position on a more permanent basis.
“Jeanine is incredibly well qualified for this position, and is considered one of the Top District Attorneys in the History of the State of New York. She is in a class by herself,” Trump wrote.
Trump withdrew Martin from consideration after a key Republican senator said he could not support Martin for the job due to his defense of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“He’s a terrific person, and he wasn’t getting the support from people that I thought,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. He later added, “But we have somebody else that will be great.”
Martin’s leading role in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement was demoralizing for subordinates who spent four years prosecuting over 1,500 riot defendants only to see the president pardon them en masse. Pirro has her own connection to the baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud.
In 2021, voting technology company Smartmatic USA sued Fox News, Pirro and others for spreading false claims that the company helped “steal” the 2020 presidential election from Trump. The company’s libel suit, filed in a New York state court, sought $2.7 billion from the defendants.
Pirro is the latest in a string of Trump appointments coming from Fox News — a list that includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who co-hosted “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
“Jeanine Pirro has been a wonderful addition to The Five over the last three years and a longtime beloved host across Fox News Media who contributed greatly to our success throughout her 14-year tenure. We wish her all the best in her new role in Washington,” a Fox News Media spokesperson said in a statement.
Martin has served as acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia since Trump’s first week in office. But his hopes of keeping the job faded amid questions about his qualifications and background. Martin had never served as a prosecutor or tried a case before taking office in January.
Martin has stirred up a chorus of critics during his brief but tumultuous tenure in office. He fired and demoted subordinates who worked on politically sensitive cases. He posted on social media about potential targets of investigations. And he forced the chief of the office’s criminal division to resign after directing her to scrutinize the awarding of a government contract during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
Martin’s temporary appointment is due to expire May 20.
Pirro, a 1975 graduate of Albany Law School, has significantly more courtroom experience than Martin. She led one of the nation’s first domestic violence units in a prosecutor’s office.
After her elected terms as a judge and district attorney, Pirro briefly campaigned in 2005 as a Republican to unseat then-Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton before announcing that she would would run for New York attorney general instead. She lost that race to Andrew Cuomo, son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Pirro became an ubiquitous television pundit during O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, often appearing on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” During her time on Fox News, she has frequently interviewed Trump.
In the final minutes of his first term as president, Trump issued a pardon to Pirro’s ex-husband, Albert Pirro, who was convicted in 2000 on conspiracy and tax evasion charges.