PHOTO PHOTO: A woman wearing a protective face mask walks past the Lujiazui financial district on the opening day of the National People’s Congress (NPC), in Pudong, Shanghai, China May 22, 2020. REUTERS / Aly Song
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday that companies from China and other countries that do not meet accounting standards will be removed from U.S. stock exchanges by the end of 2021.
Mnuchin and other officials recommended the move to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week to ensure that Chinese companies adhere to the same standards as U.S. companies, prompting China to demand frank dialogue.
Mnuchin told a White House briefing that the SEC was expected to adopt the recommendations. “By the end of next year … they will all have to commit to the same exact accounting, or they will be delisted on the exchange,” he said.
The recommendation is part of a pressure from the Trump administration to correct what it calls significant imbalances in ties between the two largest economies in the world. Tensions between the two countries have skyrocketed in recent months over China’s deal with the outbreak of coronavirus, Hong Kong and human rights.
U.S. President Donald Trump also said that China did not live up to its promises to buy more U.S. goods under a Phase 1 trade agreement, signed in January, although he said purchases should increase next year.
“We did a Phase 1 deal and it was a wonderful deal, and all of a sudden it means very little in the way of general imports of things,” Trump told reporters.
He said that increased purchases of US goods needed under the trade deal “never pay for the loss of life in our country and around the world.”
Trump also reiterated his call on the World Trade Organization to stop treating China as a developing country, claiming that doing so gave Beijing unfair advantages over the United States and other countries.
China claims the classification is fair because many of its regions are still developing.
Report by Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal and Alexandra Alper; Edited by Chris Reese and Sam Holmes
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