WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States and China can’t go on this way.
As President Barack Obama meets President Xi Jinping in Washington this week, the world’s two biggest economies are trying to rework their tangled relationship as partners and rivals – the frenemies of the globalized marketplace.
What’s transforming their ties is the end of two decades-plus of super-charged growth in China. A slowdown carries far-reaching consequences for countries and companies that have supplied it – from Chilean copper mines and Indonesian rubber plantations to equipment manufacturers like Ingersoll-Rand in the United States and Komatsu in Japan.
Concern about a decelerating China – which last year accounted for nearly a third of global economic growth – was a key reason the Federal Reserve decided last week to delay a long-awaited increase in short-term U.S. interest rates.
Xi is scheduled to arrive Tuesday in Seattle and Thursday in in Washington, where he will attend a White House state dinner on Friday.