The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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May 30, 2009

<img src=" http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/weekend.gif" border=0> Geithner wields little leverage in China talks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Timothy Geithner’s first trip to China as treasury secretary comes at a vulnerable time for the Obama administration.

Mired in a brutal recession, the United States needs Beijing to buy more American goods, allow its currency rise and make other moves to narrow an enormous trade gap. The U.S. also needs China’s help to confront any military threat from North Korea.

Yet Washington’s leverage has waned just as China’s power over the U.S. has grown.

China is now America’s biggest creditor. As of March, it held $768 billion of Treasury securities — about 10 percent of publicly traded debt.

The U.S. needs China’s money to finance U.S. budget deficits, which are soaring as Washington tries to end the recession and bolster the banking system. The administration estimates the budget deficit will hit $1.84 trillion this year. That’s four times last year’s deficit.

Geithner, who left today for meetings Monday and Tuesday with Chinese leaders, carried an ambitious U.S. goal of persuading the Chinese government to adopt policies that would transform its nation of savers into spenders.

The current U.S. administration, just like the Clinton and Bush administrations, is convinced that the key to a prosperous global economy rests heavily with China. The U.S. wants Beijing to rely more on domestic spending and less on its exports to power its own economy — and the world’s.

That shift would uncork enormous buying power and help rebalance world trade. It could hasten an end to the global recession and narrow America’s huge trade gap because the Chinese would buy more American products.

China would benefit, too.

“Beijing really wants Washington to be successful in bringing the U.S. economy out of this recession as fast as it can because it is critical to Beijing’s own economic growth,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution.

For the Chinese, there is growing nervousness about the explosion of U.S. borrowing. Like any bank worried about its loans, the Chinese have fretted over America’s budget gap. In March, Premier Wen Jiabao said, “We’ve lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course, we are concerned about the safety of our assets.”

Those comments, plus remarks by the head of China’s central bank about whether the world needs a new top reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar, jolted financial markets.

The administration insists it isn’t worried that the mound of debt it’s creating will jeopardize America’s sterling AAA bond rating. But treasury officials said Geithner still intends to reassure the Chinese.

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