Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson met with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US trade representative Jamieson Greer over breakfast on Tuesday before the US officials met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng for the second day to break a logjam over tariffs.
The Chinese and US trade officials had spoken for nearly five hours on Monday at the Swedish Prime Minister’s office where flagpoles were festooned with the American and Chinese flags.
Greer took to his social media to express optimism about the “regularity” of talks between the US and China, which, he said gives them a “good footing” for the negotiations.
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“The Chinese have been very pragmatic,” Greer wrote on his social media handle on X late Monday.
“Obviously we’ve had a lot of tensions over the years. We have tensions now, but the fact that we are regularly meeting with them to address these issues gives us a good footing for these negotiations,” he added.
However, he declined to comment on the possibility of the two countries reaching a deal, saying, “Whether there’s room for an extension, I can’t say at this point. But the conversations are constructive and they’re going in the right direction.”
Analysts are hoping that the Stockholm talks will at least lead to an extension of the current tariff levels, which are far lower than the triple-digit percentage rates that the two countries had levied on each other since US President Donald Trump came to office for the second term this January.
The trade tensions between the US and China had crescendoed in April, sending world markets into a temporary tailspin.
The two sides then backed off after holding bilateral talks in Geneva in May, and agreed to a 90-day pause in re-imposition of the sky-high levels of tariffs. That deadline is set to end on August 12. Until then, US tariffs on Chinese goods entering the US are at 30 per cent; while China has imposed a 10 per cent tariffs on US products.
The biggest issues between the two economies are centred on China withholding rare earth elements’ exports; restricted Chinese investments in the US; components of fentanyl made in China that reach US consumers; Chinese purchases of Russian and Iranian oil; and America’s steps to limit exports of technology that help power artificial intelligence systems.
Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator and now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that Trump's team would face challenges from “a large and confident partner that is more than willing to retaliate against US interests,” and that China “will not buy into a one-sided deal this time around.”
Rollover of tariff rates “should be the easy part,” she said, warning that Beijing has learned lessons since the first Trump administration.
The US has so far struck deals with quite a few of its trading partners, including Britain, Japan, European Union, Indonesia, and Philippines. China remains perhaps the biggest unresolved case.
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