https://archive.is/FKuhi (reuters)
https://archive.is/MIdNc (afp)
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met for about eight hours with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Geneva in their first face-to-face meeting since the world’s two largest economies heaped tariffs well above 100% on each other’s goods.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that an 80% tariff on Chinese goods “seems right”, suggesting for the first time a specific alternative to the 145% levies he has imposed on Chinese imports.
Neither side made any statements about the substance of the discussions nor signaled any progress towards reducing crushing tariffs as meetings at the residence of Switzerland’s ambassador to the U.N. concluded at about 8 p.m. local time. (1800 GMT)
The discussions are expected to restart on Sunday in the Swiss city, according to an individual familiar with the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The 80% number is just something that Trump posted on his social media early on Friday morning, before any meeting ever happened.
UPDATE Trump posted on truthsocial, 1 hour ago. He describes the meeting with the phrases “total reset” and “great progress”. I won’t believe this until I hear the perspective from China’s government.
IMF doesn’t buy up assets, IMF lends money to countries under economic distress and often makes demands like you have to balance your budget (“structural adjustments”), and to meet that target you cannot spend more than you earn (austerity), and so you have to cut social spending and public services, privatize this and that to get the money rolling. Show us low budget spending, show us you are financially responsible, and we will lend you the money.
In other words, it restrains economic development and further entrenches the influence of Western imperialism in the Global South.
For foreign investment, you gain access to that country’s market share. For example, the entire supply chain (including intermediaries) that Apple has built in China comprises nearly 5 million people. That’s about 0.6% of all employed workforce in China. Of course China can destroy Apple in a moment’s notice, but they have to be careful about the fallout in unemployment because 0.6% is not a small number and can have knock-on effect on the entire economy.
For banking capital, it’s about bypassing capital controls. Typically countries want to protect themselves from foreign capital speculation, so they impose capital controls. The downside to this is that if your economic policy requires that you attract foreign capital/earning export revenues in order to keep budget deficit down, because - no surprises here anymore - IMF says so (see my response to another user here), you’d want to open up your capital markets to let foreign capital in.
As you can see, China can easily solve half of its problems by simply stop believing in all the IMF neoliberal nonsense. From what I’ve seen, they are far too indoctrinated to do that, to the point of “accusing” Trump of violating IMF free trade agreement!