President Donald Trump said Monday that US and Chinese trade negotiators would "very shortly" resume talks in what he described as a breakthrough in the two economic superpowers' trade war.

"China called last night..., said let's get back to the table. So we'll be getting back to the table," Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in Biarritz.

Trump said that Chinese officials had made two "very, very good calls" and that "they want to make a deal".

The president's tone was in marked contrast to the steady hardening of positions in the number one and two economies.

Just last Friday, Trump sharply raised tariffs on all Chinese imports after Beijing hiked its own levies.

The United States is trying to force China into deep reforms of its trading model to end decades of practices, including rampant intellectual property theft, that US companies say prevents a level playing field.

However, US allies have pressured Trump at the G7 summit in France, saying that the trade war puts the world economy at risk.

Trump said that his pressure had paid off, bringing the Chinese back to the table after talks had appeared to have gone off the rails.

"They hurt very badly, but they understand this is the right thing to do," Trump said.

"One of the reasons he's a great leader, President Xi..., is they understand how life works."

"It's going to be great for China, it's going to be great for the US, it's going to be great for the world," he said.

"We're going to start very shortly to negotiate..., but I think we're going to make a deal."

Costco bets on international appetite for first Chinese store
Shanghai (AFP) Aug 25, 2019 - The US retail giant Costco is diving into the thorny area of food retail in China with its first store opening this week, but analysts warn it faces a tough ride as it looks to succeed where a series of international retailers have failed.

The move also comes at a challenging time with Beijing and Washington engaged in a tense trade war that has seen them swap punitive tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of two-way trade.

China has proved a brutal battleground for overseas food retailers in recent years, with many failing to understand consumer habits and tastes as well as local competitors building a stronger presence.

In June, French supermarket giant Carrefour agreed to sell 80 percent of its China business to domestic giant Suning after repeated losses.

And German wholesaler Metro is in the process of selling its operations to a local bidder and British grocery giant Tesco pulled out of the Chinese market in 2014.

"The Chinese market is very complicated and requires retailers to innovate and localise," said Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China.

But Costco thinks it can avoid the malaise that has plagued others with its "no-frills approach" and bulk-buy strategy.

The retailer will throw open its doors on Tuesday, five years after making its first online foray into China through Alibaba's cross-border e-commerce platform Tmall Global.

Richard Zhang, Costco's senior vice president for Asia, told AFP they had a "conservative" goal to sign up at least 100,000 new members for the new store, which is in a suburban district of Shanghai with a two million-strong population.

And Zhang said they had taken time to make sure that consumers in China knew their brand and the market was mature enough.

- Local competition -

Costco will be targeting China's affluent growing middle class, who know the brand from international travels.

However, analysts warned that local competitors are stealing ground with popular homegrown retailers such as Alibaba's bricks-and-mortar Hema stores integrating online and offline shopping.

"Local retailers are reaching out to customers via all distribution channels while foreign retailers are not so flexible to adapt to new situations," said Yu.

"The old way of a large and all-inclusive hypermarket doesn't work in China."

Chih-yuan Wang, retail research director at Mintel China Reports, warned that many foreign retailers adapted too slowly and "still didn't catch up with China's rapid ecommerce craze where customers go shopping on mobile phones."

"The cost of (later) building a home delivery service is very high and may affect Costco's basic strategy to provide the lowest available prices," he said.

Costco's big rival, membership-based warehouse Sam's Club from Walmart, has over two decades of history in China and is still on the expansion trail with plans to reach 40 stores by the end of next year.

But Zhang said the fact that Chinese consumers are already familiar with a membership supermarket model could work to Costco's advantage.

"Chinese consumers are ready to pay for a membership card that grants them an exclusive privilege to buy at a warehouse store, it's not a new concept in the country," said Zhang.

"A mature market saves us efforts in educating customers."

While he is upbeat, Zhang says he has concerns over the impact of a bruising US-China trade war and tariffs, with about 50 percent of their products from overseas.

"In order to keep our prices low, we've replaced some US importers of fresh produce with Australian importers," Zhang said.

The trade feud has escalated with Donald Trump on Friday increasing existing and planned tariffs on a total of $550 billion in Chinese goods, in response to new tit-for-tat levy hikes announced earlier that day by Beijing on $75 billion of US imports.

By the end of the year the feud will affect nearly all imports and exports between the two countries.

But ahead of Costco's official opening local residents were forming long queues to sign up for membership cards.

"I will definitely become among the first batch of Costco members," said civil servant Julia Zhu, who says she used to ship in Costco goods from overseas markets.

Trump denies China trade war causing friction at G7
Biarritz, France (AFP) Aug 25, 2019 - President Donald Trump on Sunday denied that his trade war with China is causing friction at the G7 summit, but indicated he will hold off from a threatened further escalation for now.

"I think they respect the trade war. It has to happen," Trump told reporters in Biarritz, France, where he was meeting with other leaders of the G7 group.

Asked if the other leaders had criticized the massive trade struggle, he said "no, not at all. I haven't heard that".

In fact, European members of the G7, which includes Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, have repeatedly expressed concern over the trade war's threat to the wider global economy.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was the latest, telling Trump at a breakfast meeting Sunday that "we don't like tariffs on the whole".

"We are in favor of trade peace," he said.

Talks between Washington and Beijing on ending what Trump says is a massively unfair trade relationship have hit a brick wall.

On Friday, Trump responded to a new hike in Chinese tariffs on US goods by imposing heavy extra levies against a total of $550 billion in Chinese imports.

But Trump signalled Sunday what might be a slight softening in his position, admitting that he did have doubts about escalating the trade war.

"I have second thoughts about everything," he said.

He said he would hold off for now on declaring a national emergency to invoke an obscure law that he says gives him the power to order US companies out of China.

"I have the right to, if I want. I could declare a national emergency," he said. "I have no plan right now."

Trump first brandished the possibility of the drastic measure on Friday, when he tweeted that American companies "are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China."

Despite the more nuanced comments Sunday, Trump doubled down on the rationale for his high-risk strategy with China, saying "they steal and take out, and -- intellectual property theft, anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year."

"We have a total loss of almost a trillion dollars a year," he said. "In many ways, that's an emergency."

As he has repeatedly over the last months, Trump insisted that China will eventually cave in to US demands for reforming its economic model and transforming the trade relationship.

"We're talking. I think they want to make a deal much more than I do," he said.

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US ports brace for surge of imports ahead of new tariffs on China
New York (AFP) Aug 21, 2019
The latest lurches in President Donald Trump's trade war with China set the stage for a potential repeat of late 2018 when goods flooded into America's ports to beat new tariffs. US importers, retailers and shippers are bracing for a new round of punitive duties on Chinese goods set to hit in two steps, September 1 and December 15, likely to drive a rush to get products before the holiday shopping season as they did last year. The surge in late 2018 helped major US ports notch all-time cargo re ... read more