International Forex Inforamtion

(RTTNews) - After the first days of talks in the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, U.S. officials told reporters that initial sessions had gone well, but not to expect substantive agreements in this series.

David Loevinger, senior coordinator for China affairs at the Treasury Department, said that the economic track discussions had brought all of the senior ministers dealing with economic concerns from China to meet with their counterparts including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Larry Summers, head of President Obama's council of economic advisors.

Loevinger said that both sides had been struck by the similarity of their nations' responses to the global financial crisis.

"It's been very clear how the crisis has kind of highlighted and reinforced how interdependent our two economies are," he said. "The U.S. and China, in some ways, have acted more like each other than many of the other major economies. In particular, both the U.S. and China have put in place a very aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus policies."

He added, "Both sides talked about the encouraging signs that they're seeing in both places. The stimulus policies are starting to take effect, but it was very clear that neither side was complacent at all."

Both U.S. and Chinese officials also agreed on the need for "structural reforms to rebalance their economies" Loevinger said, referring to U.S. efforts to shift to a clean energy economy and Chinese efforts to promote more domestic consumption to reduce their reliance on exports to the U.S.

Loevinger said the tone of the economic meetings was "very focused and serious," adding that White House Budget Director Peter Orszag had underscored to the Chinese the administration's commitment to bring fiscal deficits down to sustainable levels.

U.S. officials also stressed their support for China's efforts to be brought on to the boards of a broad range of global financial institutions that were created in a very different era, Loevinger said.

"Both sides I think agreed that these institutions need to be modernized to reflect the rise of China and other dynamic emerging economies," he said.

However, a senior State Department official said that while the talks were going well the goal of the meeting was more to set the stage for future action rather than make specific progress at this week's sessions.

"Very constructive, very candid discussion," he said. "This is our effort to identify and then pursue a broad range of common interests with the Chinese."

He added, "We're going to spend most of our time getting to know each other in this session, in this round. We're going to spend a lot of time trying to identify those common interests and between now and the next Strategic and Economic dialogue we're going to try and devise some concrete ways of going after those common interests."

Other discussions had impressed on the Chinese the importance that the U.S. places on global efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming, said Todd Stern, a U.S. special envoy on climate change.

"I think that they do see this as an issue that is of very significant importance, as a substantive matter, but also in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship and increasingly something that's going to be important for the way that they are perceived by the rest of the world," he said. "I think that is sinking in at a very high level."

Stern said he was hopeful that through incremental progress the U.S. and China could reach some emissions deal in advance of an upcoming summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, based on the framework that industrialized nations would reduce their emissions below a certain, fixed level, while emerging nations' goals would be based on their projected increase of emissions should they not act.
After the first days of talks in the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, U.S. officials told reporters that initial sessions had gone well, but not to expect substantive agreements in this series. David Loevinger, senior coordinator for China affairs at the Treasury Department, said that the economic track discussions had brought all of the senior ministers dealing with economic concerns from China to meet with their counterparts including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal