More than 600 US companies have urged US President Donald Trump to resolve the trade dispute with China, saying tariffs are hurting American business and consumers. Juliet Mann spoke with John Ross - senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. She started by asking him if the China-US trade talks are at a stalemate.

JOHN ROSS, SENIOR FELLOW CHONGYANG INSTITUTE FOR FINANCIAL STUDIES "So I think until President Trump realizes that he's going to have to inflict pain on a lot of American consumers which can affect his presidential election charges chances quite significantly which I think he does have in mind. I'm not very sure that the trade talks will go anywhere because he made a big miscalculation which is he thought he would make a big noise."

JULIET MANNCGTN CORRESPONDENT "Wal-Mart Target scores of big American brands have written to Trump to say it's them and it's American consumers who are being hit, who is being hurt the most in this trade war?"

JOHN ROSS, SENIOR FELLOW CHONGYANG INSTITUTE FOR FINANCIAL STUDIES "Well I think it's more or less everybody because he tried to target the tarriffs in such a way that they didn't directly hit consumers. That was carefully done if they told you what the economists call intermediate products that it puts into production. But somebody has to pay for them in the end consumers pay for them."

JULIET MANN CGTN CORRESPONDENT "How much would you say China has lost ?"

JOHN ROSS, SENIOR FELLOW CHONGYANG INSTITUTE FOR FINANCIAL STUDIES "Well it has a negative effect obviously because the US is a big export market but it's not going to have disastrous consequences. Again if you look at the estimates of it maybe knock half a percent of China's growth rate but you know China's growth rates the highest of any major economy in the world. Its target is going to come in around 6 to 6 and a half percent, the US economy this year is likely to grow maybe two and a half percent. China's economy is growing more than twice as fast as the United States. So it causes annoyance. It is a lose, China doesn't pretend it's good. they would like it to stop but it's not going to cause any catastrophic damage to China's economy."

JULIET MANN CGTN CORRESPONDENT "G20 is coming up soon. What are your expectations?"

JOHN ROSS, SENIOR FELLOW CHONGYANG INSTITUTE FOR FINANCIAL STUDIES "My expectations of the G20 are not very high I'd be very pleased if it was settled. But I wouldn't have great expectations it would settle at this meeting. I think the China side's very well prepared. I thought the white paper China style it discusses very thoroughly sometimes it becomes slightly annoyingly slow that if I wanted to make a criticism. But it's because it works out its position very carefully and once it's worked out position it doesn't move from it. Trump's position is I think on the contrary to make a great deal of noise. He knows what the most important date coming up is it is November 2020. It's his re-election that you can be sure this is the number one point on his agenda. I wouldn't want to go into a presidential election with a slowing economy and hundreds of dollars of increase in prices being passed onto US consumers. I think if he was given a realistic estimate that it might focus his mind."