Former US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson calls for ‘targeted reciprocity’ in US-China trade

Henry Paulson says Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods should not be lifted without the US getting something in return

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, warns the two countries to come back from the brink, or else risk stumbling into a war with each other

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Hank Paulson, chairman of the Paulson Institute and former US Treasury secretary, in Washington in 2018. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 4:54am, 17 Nov 2020Updated: 11:20pm, 17 Nov 2020

Henry Paulson, a former US Treasury secretary long known as one of Washington’s strongest proponents of dialogue with Beijing, said President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods should not be lifted without the US getting something in return.

“The American administration is about to change. But the clock will not simply be rewound,” Paulson said in a speech at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum on Monday. “We should look to a punitive toolkit built on targeted reciprocity that includes jointly withholding access to our markets.”

His remarks were the latest sign that the dramatic, bipartisan, and negative shift in American attitudes toward China during the Xi Jinping era will not necessarily soften after Trump leaves office.

Tensions between the two countries have rapidly worsened in recent years over trade policy, human rights, and most recently the coronavirus. As Xi has tightened his grip on power in Beijing, both parties in Washington have increasingly come to see China as a destabilising and aggressive threat.

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“The Trump administration was responding to real concerns of American people about China, and real failures of China to act as responsible global citizens,” said Paulson, who served as US Treasury secretary under George W Bush and in 2011 founded a think tank aimed at fostering the US-China relationship.

Former US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson calls for ‘targeted reciprocity’ in US-China trade

Henry Paulson says Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods should not be lifted without the US getting something in return Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, warns the two countries to come back from the brink, or else risk stumbling into a war with each other

Henry Paulson says Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods should not be lifted without the US getting something in return

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, warns the two countries to come back from the brink, or else risk stumbling into a war with each other