The United States heads to next week's Group of 20 finance ministers meeting looking for partners in confronting Beijing over its trade practices, a senior Treasury Department official said Thursday.

Talks in Buenos Aires between the world's largest advanced and emerging economies will occur amid raw tensions over President Donald Trump's increasingly confrontational trade policies.

The White House last week announced a raft of tariffs and is poised to unveil more soon.

"We have been working with like-minded countries around the world to recognize the problems that China's trade policies and investment policies cause for the rest of the world," the Treasury official told reporters in a briefing given on condition of anonymity.

"There's been substantial recognition of this problem."

A senior Trump trade advisor warned Thursday the president will soon consider additional tariffs on Chinese products to retaliate for China's alleged theft of American companies' intellectual property.

US officials have long accused Beijing of fostering massive overcapacity in the metals sector and forcing foreign companies to surrender proprietary technology as a condition of operating in China.

But US trading partners have condemned Washington's decision to impose sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, with markets and lawmakers warning of the risk of a trade war and higher consumer prices.

The Treasury official also said the United States would work to address energy investment in Latin America and the current crisis in Venezuela as well as possible new regulations for cryptocurrencies and counterterrorism finance, particularly concerning North Korea's nuclear program.

The United States will seek to build consensus in these other areas even if trade policy remains a source of tension, the official said.

"While there can be trade frictions there can also be a lot of cooperation in areas involving growth, in involving terrorism financing, involving crypto assets and that's what I expect," the official said.

Trump to consider trade measures against China 'in coming weeks': advisor
Washington (AFP) March 15, 2018 - A senior White House advisor on trade said Thursday that President Donald Trump would soon consider fresh punitive measures against Beijing over its "theft" of US intellectual property.

The warning raises the temperature for currently fraught US foreign relations, in which Trump's aggressive trade maneuvers have taken center stage.

With tariffs recently announced on major imports including steel and aluminum, trade war fears have sent markets tumbling and left US trading partners torn between conciliation and pushback in response.

"In the coming weeks, President Trump is going to have on his desk some recommendations," Peter Navarro said on CNBC.

"This will be one of the many steps the president is going to courageously take in order to address unfair trade practices."

Chinese officials have warned they are likely to retaliate in kind. Speaking at a regular briefing on Thursday, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said: "History has proven that a trade war is in no one's interest."

"If an undesirable situation arises, China has the intention of safeguarding its legitimate rights," he said.

The United States has long accused Beijing of forcing US companies to turn over proprietary commercial information and intellectual property as a condition of operating in China.

The office of the US Trade Representative launched an inquiry into the matter in August and is due to submit its findings to the White House soon.

The newly ascendant Navarro emerged triumphant last week when former top economic advisor Gary Cohn resigned following a bruising internal battle over whether to impose the steel and aluminum tariffs.

- ' Cracking down' -

Trump himself has for decades held nationalistic views on trade and opposed globalization.

But the new tariffs have drawn rebukes from top lawmakers in Trump's own Republican Party as well as fierce opposition from industry groups, which fear rising consumer prices and raw materials costs as well as diminished access to export markets.

The Harvard-trained Navarro rose to prominence by publishing anti-Beijing diatribes on trade and is an outlier among more mainstream economists, who believe excessive tariffs will be self-defeating.

"I don't think ... anybody on Wall Street will oppose cracking down on China's theft of our intellectual property," Navarro said Thursday.

The United States on Wednesday launched a trade dispute with India at the World Trade Organization over export subsidies.

Officials say the White House's actions on intellectual property could include a raft of retaliatory tariffs on billions of dollars of tech and telecommunications imports from China.

Documents seen Wednesday by AFP also indicated the United States has proposed WTO reforms that would punish member countries which fail to abide by certain rules -- a move seen as aimed squarely at Beijing, which the Trump administration says is not a market economy and should not have been admitted the WTO.

Navarro added Thursday that fears of tit-for-tat countermeasures and subsequent harm to growth were overblown.

"We're going to work with our allies and trading partners to make things better for everybody," Navarro said.

"I think it'll be fine if you just look at the chess board because nobody really has any incentive to pick a fight with us. They're getting too good a deal from us."

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