(AFP) – China said on Friday it welcomed a visit to Beijing by Republican US Senator Steve Daines, who has vowed to raise trade tensions and fentanyl smuggling with officials this week. Daines, a strong supporter of US President Donald Trump, has extensive business experience in China and Hong Kong.
“China welcomes Senator Daines’s visit and it also welcomes Americans from all walks of life, including members of Congress, to visit China,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular briefing. “China has always believed that maintaining stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-US ties is in the common interest of both peoples and is the general expectation of the international community,” Mao said.
Trump has unleashed tariffs on major trading partners including China, Canada, and Mexico since returning to the White House in January, citing trade imbalances and their failure to stem the flow of deadly fentanyl into the United States. Daines, who represents the state of Montana, has said he would raise those issues with Chinese officials during his visit this week.
“We know… it’s the Mexican cartels that are producing the fentanyl but those precursors, the raw materials, come from China,” he told Fox News on Monday. “I will be talking with the Chinese leadership about what they can do,” he said. “They can do a whole lot more to shut down the flow of these chemicals that go to Mexico and then fentanyl comes in the United States.”
He also said he would address the yawning trade imbalance between the world’s two largest economies. “This will be about fentanyl. It will also be about this $300 billion trade deficit that we have with China, what we can do to change the trade practices,” he said. “We could sell a whole lot more into China.”
Trump said this week that Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping would visit the United States soon. Beijing has not confirmed the visit.
© 2024 AFP
