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HANGZHOU, China : The United States and China are set to open key trade talks Wednesday, with Washington looking to make progress on several disputes ahead of a visit by US President Barack Obama, officials said.
US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will meet a team led by Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan for two days starting later Wednesday in eastern Hangzhou.
The talks come less than three weeks before Obama's first presidential visit to China, and amid rising trade tensions between the two over US tariffs on Chinese tyre imports and a Beijing probe into US car products and chicken meat.
"I know the Chinese have some issues -- and we also have some issues," Locke told reporters at a pre-meeting briefing early Wednesday.
"We're hoping we will be able to make some considerable progress over the next day and a half in terms of some of these issues."
Locke also said climate change and clean energy would be high on the agenda for the meeting of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), which last convened in Yorba Linda, California, in September 2008.
"As the world's two biggest emitters of carbon emissions, we also have a responsibility to act," Locke said.
Washington and Beijing will be key players at the global climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, which will aim to hammer out a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Clean energy projects were "essential to keep our economies growing while preventing the catastrophic effects of climate change," Locke said.
Although nearly 40 percent of a four-trillion-yuan (US$586 billion) stimulus package from China last year had been earmarked for green technology, Locke noted trade barriers had kept US firms out of new business opportunities.
Obama ignited the first major trade dispute of his presidency last month when he imposed punitive duties on Chinese-made tyres.
Beijing retaliated by lodging a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and launching an investigation into possible unfair trade practices involving imports of US car products and chicken meat.
Beijing has charged that Washington's move violated WTO rules, but Obama has denied that it amounts to protectionism.
And last week, the United States launched a probe on whether to slap almost 100 percent tariffs on steel pipes imported from China.
"If countries engage in protectionism, it invites retaliation. Once we have retaliation, countries end up in a trade war. And in a trade war, no one wins," Locke said.
Obama is due to visit to China on November 15-18. He will go to Shanghai and Beijing, where he will hold a third set of talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
- AFP/sf
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