Did China’s ‘skilled’ negotiators help break the US trade deadlock?

As China and the United States concluded their first high-level trade talks since last month’s unprecedented escalation of tariff rates, comments from the US delegation shed light on the negotiating style of their counterparts – providing rare details from a closed-door dialogue between the world’s two largest economies.

“The vice-premier [He Lifeng] is a very skilled negotiator … I had a very good economic briefing beforehand, but there was no sense of anxiety,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an interview with CNBC after the two-day session in Geneva, Switzerland.

“There is a sense of moving forward. There is a sense of mutual respect. There is a sense that we had shared interests.”

The talks were marked by a rare sense of “equanimity” and mutual respect, Bessent said, and their tenor stood in sharp contrast to the negotiations led by former vice-premier Liu He during the first term of current US President Donald Trump.

Those earlier sessions were often fraught with tension and volatility – with numerous reports of abrupt breakdowns, public brinkmanship and mutual distrust on most points of contention.

That previous iteration of the trade war concluded in 2020 with a “phase-one” deal, under which China pledged to increase purchases of US goods in exchange for a pause in tariff hikes. The agreement, though touted by both sides as a victory, was criticised in some circles.

During last weekend’s meeting, Chinese Vice-Minister of Commerce Li Chenggang also made his debut as a trade representative – a trial by fire the official appears to have surmounted.

South China Morning Post