Washington (AFP)

Washington and Beijing are actively trying to get the negotiations back on track to put an end to the trade war between them, said Donald Trump's chief economic adviser on Sunday.

"If negotiations resume substantially, then we will bring China to Washington for a meeting of chief negotiators to continue the talks," said Larry Kudlow on Fox News Sunday.

According to Mr. Kudlow, it is the senior officials of both sides who have to speak on the phone "in the week or the next 10 days" to try to clear the ground.

The statements by the White House advisor still cast doubt on the arrival of a Chinese delegation in Washington during September, following a visit to Shanghai by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the Secretary of State. Treasure Steven Mnuchin.

Mr. Kudlow points out, however, that the telephone conversation that took place in mid-August in the wake of Shanghai between MM. Lighthizer and Mnuchin and Chinese negotiators Liu He and Zhong Shan "were far more positive than the media reported."

The financial markets, made extremely nervous by a series of signs of a slowdown in the world economy - especially because of the war waged by the first two economies in the world - scrutinize any information on this front and react strongly.

Mr. Kudlow has also been pounding a positive message about US growth: "Let's not be afraid to be optimistic".

- Christmas gift -

The negotiations between China and the United States started in earnest in January and seemed to have made enough progress to give hope for an early agreement.

But in the spring, the US president abruptly ended the talks, believing that the Chinese were back on the commitments already made.

Eventually, both sides took up their tongues at the highest level, between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Osaka in June.

But soon after, the host of the White House decided to announce the imposition from 1 September of 10% punitive tariffs on 300 billion dollars of products imported from China previously spared.

Mr. Trump, who is campaigning for his re-election, has finally decided to postpone until December 15 the imposition of this tax on a variety of consumer products so as not to spoil the holiday season of the Americans.

This gesture was seen as a concession to China and a half-admission that tariffs may well have an impact on the US economy.

But the chief adviser to the president on trade, Peter Navarro, has tried on several Sunday shows to convince otherwise.

Donald Trump decided to postpone this after meeting business leaders who explained to him that their contracts were denominated in dollars and that the imposition of customs duties on products they import for the holidays would impact them. full force, Navarro explained on the ABC channel.

According to him, these business leaders told the president that they "relocated all their production out of China".

Mr. Navarro also vigorously defended any contradiction in the statements of the administration, which on the one hand asserts that the cost of customs tariffs is entirely borne by the Chinese and on the other hand defers part of these tariffs. because of the potential impact on the American consumer.

On CNN, he said that "there is absolutely no evidence that the American consumer will bear the consequences", contradicting several recent studies going in the opposite direction, including those of the IMF, the regional central bank of Boston or Harvard University.

"We know that the Chinese are lowering prices, lowering the value of the yuan and there is a real haemorrhage of their manufacturing base" out of the country, insisted Mr. Navarro.

© 2019 AFP