China and the United States held economic and trade talks in Madrid for two consecutive days. After the talks, the U.S. Treasury Secretary said that China made a "very radical request", but he didn't completely reject the request in the end. Instead, he said that he would study it after returning home. The U.S. side didn't want to refuse, but couldn't refuse because it didn't have as many bargaining chips as China did. What exactly is the radical demand that US Treasury Secretary Bescent mentioned? Will the Sino-US Madrid talks become a turning point in the Sino-US economic and trade game?
According to the consensus reached in the joint statement of Sino-US Stockholm economic and trade talks, since August 12th, the 90-day tariff truce agreement reached by China and the United States seems to have pressed the pause button of economic and trade friction. Among them, the United States promised to continue to suspend 24% reciprocal tariffs, and China also suspended relevant counter-measures simultaneously, but under the superficial calm, there was actually an undercurrent.
Two days before the Madrid talks, the United States suddenly included 23 Chinese semiconductor and biotechnology companies in the export control list, trying to seize the initiative in negotiations through extreme pressure.
Since the talks in Stockholm, China has built a counter-tools box: on the one hand, through rare-earth export controls, the U.S. military and chip industry, which relies on Chinese raw materials, is under great pressure.
On the other hand, guiding enterprises to adjust the sourcing channels of agricultural products, the original flow of soybean orders to the United States to Brazil and Argentina. data show that half of the U.S. soybean exports depend on the Chinese market, this structural dependence has become the key code for the Chinese game.
On September 13, the Chinese side announced the launch of an anti-dumping investigation into simulated chips originating in the United States, directly hitting the life of the U.S. industry.
In the field of analogue chips, U.S. enterprises account for more than half of the global share, while the Chinese market contributes 30% of the revenue of giants such as Texas Instruments and ADI.
Preliminary evidence shows that between 2022 and 2024, U.S. analogue chip sales in China grew by 37%, but the price fell by 52%, with a dumping range of 302.41 for universal interface chips and 458.51 for polar drive chips, which is malicious dumping.
It is worth noting that the investigation focused solely on mature process chips above 40nm, avoiding the risk of “comprehensively disconnecting” and delivering the “field reciprocity” signal that the more restrictions the U.S. has in the semiconductor field, the more accurate the Chinese counterprocess.
Bessent said during the talks he stressed that he was "not willing to sacrifice national security", but after the first day talks, the U.S. wording had clearly softened, and Bessent claimed that he would study the "radical demands" of China.
Following the talks, the two sides not only reached a framework consensus on the TikTok issue, they agreed to establish a third-party technical audit mechanism, but also made breakthroughs in reducing investment barriers and promoting relevant economic and trade cooperation.
At the domestic level, the lobbying team of companies such as Texas Instruments warned that export controls could lead to a loss of Chinese market share; agricultural state lawmakers worried that soybean exports to China would continue to deteriorate.
At the international level, the EU explicitly refused to participate in the "customs union with China" proposed by the United States, which made the United States' plan to build a multilateral pressure alliance fail.
The dramatic nature of the Madrid talks lies in the fact that China’s so-called “radical demands” are essentially a systematic countermeasure to the long-term unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States.From the defense layout of the August ceasefire, to the precise countermeasures before the recent talks, to the results of the negotiating table, China has transformed the “extreme pressure” of the United States into its own “negotiation initiative” by precisely controlling the time window.
When China's "radical demand" meets the "irrefusable" of the United States, it reveals not who wins or loses, but that the economic and trade rules in the era of globalization are being recalibrated. The unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States based on hegemonic thinking are becoming more and more unfeasible, and the reciprocal game based on international rules led by China is becoming the new mainstream, and the turning point of the Sino-US economic and trade game has arrived.