Li Keqiang, Chinese Premier, Makes a Modest Peace Offering on Trade - The New York Times

DALIAN, China — A top Chinese leader said on Tuesday that his country would cut tariffs and loosen limits on foreign investment, two measures that could ease trade tensions somewhat with the United States.

Speaking in the Chinese port city of Dalian at a meeting of the World Economic Forum, Premier Li Keqiang, China’s No. 2 official, appeared to offer a small olive branch to the Trump administration. He said China would allow foreign financial services companies into its market a year earlier than previously promised and that it would rewrite many rules on foreign investment.

“We will move up the lifting of foreign capital limits in securities, futures and life insurance, from 2021 to 2020,” Mr. Li said, prompting a burst of applause from a crowd that appeared to include many bankers and others in finance. “This shows China’s commitment to opening up.”

By themselves, changes to foreign investment laws are unlikely to satisfy the Trump administration, but they might be a first step toward improving relations.

Trade negotiations between the United States and China collapsed in early May, mainly because Chinese negotiators essentially withdrew previous offers to amend many of the country’s laws. The prospect of rewriting Chinese legislation in response to the demands of a foreign power had stirred a nationalistic backlash within the Chinese leadership and civil service.

President Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed at a meeting on Saturday during the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, that they would restart trade talks. But neither side made any mention of returning the negotiations to where they had been in early May, nor did they raise the fraught issue of whether China would rewrite its laws.

China’s legislature approved a new legal code for foreign investment in March, giving the government a face-saving way to justify changes in other laws without appearing to acquiesce to American pressure. Over the weekend, China also slightly trimmed various longstanding restrictions on foreign investment in some industries. But foreign businesses have consistently said that changes on such a small scale would not be enough.

Bigger obstacles stand in the way of a lasting peace on trade. The Trump administration has also focused on persuading China to curtail lavish government subsidies to exporters and to companies that want to rival foreign firms in sectors like commercial aircraft, semiconductors and electric cars.

The Trump administration contends that these policies create unfair, government-backed competitors for American companies and workers. China has resisted putting limits on subsidies, which it regards as having been highly successful in building up its huge industries.

China’s move on foreign financial services would allow international securities firms and insurers to control brokerages and other businesses in China. Currently, foreign firms are allowed only partial stakes. China pledged a year and a half ago to allow foreign firms more leeway.

Mr. Li gave no details about plans to lower tariffs, though China has been reducing them overall in recent months, even as it was hitting the United States with retaliatory tariffs during their trade war.

Tim Stratford, a former American trade official who is now the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, expressed cautious optimism after Mr. Li’s speech that the Chinese government might make substantive changes. “He’s the head of a very large government and the challenge is to transmit that vision through the whole government,” he said.

But Mr. Stratford noted that China had lost a World Trade Organization legal case in 2012, after not following through on a commitment it made when it joined the W.T.O. in 2001 to open its market to foreign credit cards. China’s civil service is still working on regulations to let them in.

Mr. Li also made a carefully hedged promise that China would maintain the overall stability of its currency, the renminbi, and would not seek to devalue it so as to gain a competitive advantage in trade.

If the renminbi’s value declines against the dollar, that would make Chinese exports cheaper in terms of dollars and more competitive overseas, while making imports of foreign goods more expensive and less competitive within China. The United States Treasury has been putting pressure on China for many years not to devalue its currency, fearing the effects on trade competition as well as disruption of financial stability in China and some of its Asian neighbors.

But on Sunday, President Trump unexpectedly praised a modest decline in the value of the renminbi last year. He noted that the weakening of the renminbi then had offset some of the costs of his tariffs on Chinese goods for American consumers.

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