U.S. President Joe Biden holds a formal news conference in the East Room of the White House, Washington, D.C. U.S. January 19, 2022. WASHINGTON, Jan 19, Reuters -- President Joe Biden said it was too soon to make commitments on lifting U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, but his chief trade negotiator Katherine Tai was working on the issue.
I'd like to be able to lift some of them, but we're not there yet," Biden told a news conference at the White House.
He said he was talking about China's commitments under a Phase 1 trade deal signed by his predecessor Donald Trump.
China has fallen far short of its two-year Phase 1 trade agreement to buy $200 billion in additional U.S. goods and services during 2020 and 2021, and it is not known how the shortfall will be addressed.
China's purchases reached only 60% of the target through November 2021, according to the data compiled by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release December data next week.
Biden was aware that some business groups were clamoring for him to remove U.S. tariffs of up to 25% imposed by Trump on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports, and that was why Tai was working on the issue.
Shu Jueting, a spokeswoman for China's Ministry of Commerce, said on Thursday that removing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods would help the global economic recovery especially at a time of high inflation.
Shu said that the cancellation of imposed tariffs would be beneficial for China, the United States and the world.
Before the United States can create conditions for trade cooperation, China has said.