US-China trade talks end with no breakthrough

WASHINGTON – U.S. and Chinese negotiators have ended two days of meetings without reaching a breakthrough in a trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies that has disrupted global commerce.

The delegations “exchanged views on how to achieve fairness, balance and reciprocity in the economic relationship,” Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, says in a statement that doesn’t mention further talks.

The dispute over China’s high-tech industrial policy has escalated, with the U.S. and China taxing an additional $16 billion of each other’s goods. This follows a U.S. move last month to slap tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese products, after which Beijing responded in kind.

The U.S. is readying tariffs on $200 billion more of Chinese products, and China has vowed to counterpunch by targeting $60 billion in American goods.