According to CCTV news reports, the Chinese and US commerce ministers held a meeting in the United States. China discussed China's key concerns to the US side, covering semiconductors, export control, investment review and other fields. The main body of the United States maintaining high tariffs on Chinese goods, including more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on the export restriction list, and the United States also plans to expand investment restrictions on China. The US approach has damaged mutual trust in commerce and trade between China and the United States, and has an impact on the interests of Chinese and American enterprises. During the meeting, China and the United States agreed to maintain commercial and trade communication and exchanges. On the 26th, Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao continued to meet with US Trade Representative Dai Qi. During the meeting, the Chinese side continued to explain to the US side the issues that should be resolved in China-US economic and trade relations, including IPEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Mechanism, US tariffs on China, and improper practices of the US side in Taiwan-related economic and trade relations.
At present, the economic and trade performance of China and the United States is downward compared with the same period last year, falling by 13.1% year-on-year in the first quarter to US$161.588 billion. Against this background, China's concerns during the two meetings were sincere. It pointed out a series of problems in bilateral economic and trade by the US side, and without solving these problems, the Sino-US cooperation that the US side wants to promote cannot be carried out. At present, the United States still lacks sincerity, and it is difficult to stop the downward cycle trend of Sino-US economic and trade relations. After meeting with China, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Raimondo presided over the IPEF Ministerial Meeting on the 27th. Raimondo shouted at the meeting that China's ban on Micron chips would not be revealed. The United States will work more with allies to counter China's approach, and the 14 nations at the meeting, including the United States, announced that they would establish emergency telecommunications mechanisms. This allows information to be exchanged and collaborated in the event of supply chain disruptions, thereby reducing economic harm.
The IPEF mechanism currently includes 14 countries, and its members include developed economies such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, as well as India, the Philippines and other countries. The United States launched the planning of the emergency telecommunications mechanism to prepare for a greater degree of decoupling from China. However, in the case of China's actual global industrial chain hub, the manipulation of the United States is to further undermine the integrity of the industrial chain and cause the semiconductor industry to fall into greater turmoil. At present, the semiconductor market is facing a chaotic situation, on the one hand, the aftermath caused by the new crown epidemic has not receded, the decline in global demand has caused excess inventory of major semiconductor manufacturers, and the market as a whole is in a downward cycle. Japan, South Korea's semiconductor exports are affected, especially South Korea, Samsung Electronics' profit fell by more than 90% year-on-year in the first quarter. On the other hand, the United States introduced the chip bill, coercing Japan and the Netherlands and other countries to restrict the export of semiconductor equipment, further disrupting the original market distribution of the chip industry. Causing the upstream and downstream chaos in the semiconductor industry to intensify. Under the chaotic market situation, the United States is trying to rebuild its supply chain by relying on Japan and South Korea, which have been greatly damaged by the economy, and India and the Philippines, which have a fairly incomplete industrial base, and face complicated problems of cost and efficiency.
At the same time, the hollowness of the IPEF mechanism itself also makes the US initiative lack a basis for implementation. The IPEF meeting held by Raimondo on the 27th focused on improving work conditions, promoting the application of clean energy and tax reform, which cannot solve the main problems of investment, commerce and trade for countries. More than 30 U.S. groups have spoken out to question that the IPEF negotiations will not only fail to produce results, but may even harm existing U.S. interests. The big pie drawn by the United States around the IPEF mechanism is not small, and the signal it is trying to release to China is not small, but the United States does not invest, and the second does not open the US market to promote trade. This makes the IPEF plan and the US action against China more on paper and difficult to implement.
If the US side, which has an increasingly weak economic foundation, continues to confuse the public with all kinds of empty actions, it will only expose its weakness more and more. The US action is also reminding China that it is imperative to carry out more three-dimensional and comprehensive independent replacement work.