Jaw Jaw Back on Cards in U.S.-China Trade War

(Bloomberg) -- There have been repeated setbacks in efforts to halt a damaging trade war between China and the U.S., but at least talks are — for now — back on.

China says Vice Premier Liu He will visit Washington “in early October,” though it hasn’t specified a date. The U.S. issued a cautious statement confirming the plans, also without saying exactly when talks would happen.

It’s a baby step toward addressing a tariff dispute that is affecting not just China and the U.S. but many of the countries whose trade depends on the health of the world’s two biggest economies. It has preoccupied other nations watching nervously for cues on how the China spat might play out in their own trade frictions with Donald Trump’s administration.

Trump is due to ratchet up tariffs on China on Oct. 1 and again in December. So the pressure is on to find a release valve. Even so, talks have been scheduled before only to fall apart. Things have grown more complicated since May, after Chinese telecoms giant Huawei was put on a blacklist and a tentative truce reached at the Group of 20 summit broke down.

Trump, meanwhile, has a tendency for Tweet storms that veer between threats against China and saying a deal is likely. That flip-flopping makes it harder for Beijing to plot a course. A simple sign of progress would be to set, and announce, an actual date for negotiations.

Global Headlines

No way out | Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a second day of humiliating defeats in Britain’s Parliament. Unable to get his way on Brexit, he then failed in his bid to trigger a snap general election. But having bet everything on getting the U.K. out of the European Union by Oct. 31 with or without a deal, he has no choice but to keep trying.

Too late? | Embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam called her withdrawal of extradition legislation that triggered months of protests just the “first step” to addressing unrest. But she resisted protesters’ calls to immediately meet other demands such as an independent inquiry into police conduct and an amnesty for detained activists. Pro-democracy campaigners and lawmakers say yesterday’s concession was too little, too late.

Soothing nerves | Italian Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte appointed veteran European lawmaker Roberto Gualtieri as finance minister in a move that might be crucial in repairing relations with the EU. The announcement of a new cabinet yesterday followed the collapse of the previous administration in which former deputy premier Matteo Salvini tried to unite opposition to the EU over everything from budget rules to refugees.

Rewriting the rules | A sense of anger and betrayal is growing across the Indian state of Assam, where 1.9 million mostly Muslim residents were made stateless on Saturday with the release of a register that aims to separate genuine citizens from illegal migrants. Instead, as Bibhudatta Pradhan reports, it’s dividing families and fueling concerns Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party is using it to advance a hard-line Hindu agenda.

Grassroots challenge | Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s self-styled illiberal democracy — under which he wields outsized control and has sparked rule-of-law probes by the EU — is at risk of an upset. Rivals sense an opportunity in local elections next month and are unifying behind opposition candidates including for mayor of Budapest. It’s a tall order. The ruling party controls all but three of two dozen major urban areas.

What to Watch

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Beijing today with a delicate balance of policy objectives that include urging a resolution of the trade war and maintaining a hard line toward China on matters such as intellectual property.
• U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is due to meet Johnson later today in London after he urged Ireland and the EU to negotiate “in good faith” with the British prime minister over Brexit.

And finally...After Trump was ridiculed for repeatedly saying Hurricane Dorian might strike Alabama, he showed reporters a National Weather Service map yesterday that he personally doctored with a black line that extended the storm’s path to include the state, officials told Josh Wingrove and Jennifer Jacobs. He later said he wasn’t aware the map had been altered.

--With assistance from Anthony Halpin, Ruth Pollard, Karen Leigh and Tim Ross.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net

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