Hungarian leader hope for positive outcomes on China-US trade dispute

World
Europe

03:20

A total of 17 trade ministers from China and Central and Eastern European countries recently met for trade talks in Ningbo, a coastal city in east China's Zhejiang Province. At the meeting, reporter Wang Hui sat down with Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. He shared his views on trade protectionism, the current China-US trade dispute, and the ministerial conference.

“There was an agreement about establishing an e-commerce platform among the 17 countries, which will help to speed up the process and accelerate the trade process," said Szijjarto.

Last December, Hungarian Minister established the region customs coordination center. The center will help the trade process to become much faster since the current customs procedures have slowed down the trade. Szijjarto says, "We need to get rid of all those obstacles."

While addressing the rising trade protectionism, he said, “Hungary has a very small but open economy, that’s why it so concerns to us that the EU and the US seem to enter a trade war, these kinds of conflicts put harm on both stakeholders.”

He also touched upon the current China-US trade dispute, “China is our No. 1 trading partner outside of EU, and the US is No. 2 trading partner out of EU. Any kind of conflict between two such important partners of ours will end up causing harms in Hungary, so we really cross fingers for both China and the US to be able to overcome this issue and find some peaceful solution.”

He hopes the two sides can resolve the problem as soon as possible. Szijjarto concludes, “The longer the countries carry the debate, the bigger chances they impose restrictive measures against each other, which will be very harmful.”