NEW YORK, April 22 -- The business community is anticipating a trade agreement to be inked soon between the United States and China, which will boost cooperation, a U.S. business leader has said.
"We are hopeful to reach an agreement as quickly as possible to allow trade and investment to flow more smoothly, more naturally, more freely between our two countries," Craig Allen, president of United States-China Business Council (USCBC), told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Allen, who came into office in July last year, said a trade agreement will help put both sides onto a new plateau to engage in further cooperation.
The United States and China "have a very large, robust commercial relationship that has significant room for growth," said the USCBC president, who served as commercial attache at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in the 1990s and later as the deputy assistant secretary for China at the U.S. Commerce Department's International Trade Administration.
Instead of taking the growth for granted, he suggested that a careful management of the business ties is required to avoid stagnation.
Given the fact that the world's two largest economies are highly complementary, and a developing China, whiling presenting competition, also creates opportunities that U.S. companies should grasp, he said.
About 2.3 million Americans have jobs associated with trade with China, "a significant part of our workforce," noted the USCBC president.
Approximately 1 million Americans are working on exports to China, about 300,000 are working for Chinese enterprises investing in the United States, and another million are working on the import side, according to Allen, citing the latest surveys by his organization.
He lauded China's recent moves toward further reform and opening-up, including the decision to lower value-added tax and adopt a foreign investment law, saying they are "with considerable creativity."
"These are all important measures that will have an impact and will help foreign suppliers to the Chinese market, including American suppliers," said Allen, adding that the moves will also strengthen the competitiveness of the Chinese economy, which is "definitely win-win."
Saying the recent efforts by both the United States and China have made him "very optimistic" about the outlook of a possible trade deal, Allen also noted that "it would be naive to believe that a trade agreement can resolve all differences," as "complexity" exists in the two economies.