On September 30 and October 1 local time, the Group of Twenty (G20) Trade Ministerial was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States. Li Chenggang, China's International Trade Representative and Vice Minister of Commerce, led the Chinese delegation and called on G20 members to uphold multilateralism and strengthen cooperation on food security, industrial capacity, forced labor, and the Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) principle. China's Ministry of Commerce said the two countries maintained trade communication during the meeting, providing some buffer amid otherwise tense bilateral trade relations.

The meeting was hosted by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, marking a major trade-ministerial event during the United States' 2026 G20 presidency. This year's G20 Leaders' Summit is scheduled for December 14-15 in Miami, chaired by President Donald Trump. Delegations attending the Milwaukee meeting came from China, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and other G20 members and invited economies, reflecting a broad turnout.

As host, the United States set four agenda items: condemning the “weaponization” of food trade, addressing so-called “structural overcapacity,” pushing reform of the Most-Favored-Nation principle, and eliminating “forced labor” in global supply chains. According to multiple reports, however, only the food-security item produced a joint statement; the other three failed to yield outcome documents because of sharp disagreements among members, with the US-China divide over overcapacity and labor issues seen as the key sticking point.

In his remarks, Li Chenggang explicitly opposed using the pretext of addressing “overcapacity” or “forced labor” to pursue unilateralism and protectionism, stressing that all parties should jointly uphold the multilateral trading system centered on the World Trade Organization (WTO). He called on G20 members to strengthen solidarity and cooperation on food security, industrial capacity, forced-labor governance, and the MFN principle, and to oppose using agenda-setting as a vehicle for protectionist measures.

During the meeting, Li Chenggang also held separate bilateral talks with the heads of delegations from the United States, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, South Korea and Poland, exchanging views on trade and economic issues of mutual concern — underscoring China's dense bilateral diplomacy alongside the multilateral proceedings.

The trade ministerial took place against a backdrop of a partial thaw in US-China trade relations. In late September, during Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States, the two sides announced an extension of their trade truce through January 10 of next year. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two countries had also agreed to lower tariffs on roughly $30 billion worth of goods, covering consumer products as well as some US energy and agricultural goods. This set of arrangements provided the political backdrop for the “continued communication” seen in Milwaukee.

After the meeting, however, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a statement on October 4 criticizing the US-led approach to setting the meeting's agenda, accusing Washington of using the multilateral platform to advance unilateralism and protectionism — a sign that, despite signs of a bilateral thaw, structural disagreements over trade-governance rules between the two countries remain unresolved.

Analysts note that the failure to reach consensus on three of the four agenda items exposes the limits of the G20's coordinating capacity amid the current geo-economic landscape, and adds uncertainty over whether the year-end Miami summit can achieve a substantive breakthrough on trade. Through its dense bilateral diplomacy and multilateral statements, China is seeking to position itself as a “defender of multilateralism” in these disputes, even as its disagreements with the United States over overcapacity and labor issues remain unlikely to be bridged in the near term.

Li Chenggang, 58, is from Taihu County in Anhui province. He holds a bachelor's degree in law from Peking University and a master's degree in law and economics from the University of Hamburg in Germany. He began his career in August 1989, working for years at China's former Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and later the Ministry of Commerce, where he handled treaties and law, anti-dumping investigations, and fair-trade affairs. From 2010 to 2017 he headed the Ministry of Commerce's Department of Treaty and Law, with a one-year secondment as Vice Mayor of Qingdao from 2013 to 2014, before serving as Assistant Minister of Commerce from late 2016 to early 2021. From February 2021 to October 2025, he served as China's Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva. This September, China formally appointed Li as Vice Minister of Commerce and International Trade Representative; from September 20, his title was further elevated from “International Trade Representative of the Ministry of Commerce” to “International Trade Representative of the People's Republic of China” — a move seen as an important personnel step to strengthen China's multilateral trade-negotiation capacity amid ongoing US-China trade friction.

After the meeting, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce responded to reporters' questions, disclosing details of the disagreements on the three items that failed to reach consensus. On food security, several emerging-market and developing members, including China, argued that food-importing and food-exporting countries should jointly safeguard supply-chain stability, while each country also retains the right to take necessary measures for domestic public-policy goals such as food security — a position that was ultimately incorporated into the joint statement. On overcapacity and forced labor, the spokesperson said both items were contentious from the moment they were put on the agenda, since many G20 members currently face US tariffs imposed in the name of “forced labor” and are also targets of US “overcapacity” investigations; most members therefore held differing views on the chair's push for a joint statement and a related cooperation mechanism. On reforming the Most-Favored-Nation principle, most members, including China, stressed that the principle is a cornerstone of the multilateral trading system, providing stability and predictability for global trade, and that undermining it would seriously damage that system's foundations — so the chair likewise did not put forward an outcome document on this item.

The spokesperson added that China upheld its principles while pushing for dialogue and cooperation throughout the meeting, both safeguarding its own legitimate concerns and helping the meeting reach as much consensus as possible. The spokesperson said the meeting reflected the real pressures the multilateral trading system currently faces, but that the multilateral consultation mechanism itself still holds irreplaceable value, and that China remains willing to work with all parties to uphold the WTO-centered multilateral trading system.

The US side's position is also worth noting. As host, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer framed the meeting in his opening remarks as a gathering of “possible architects of a new international economic order,” saying the global economy had for more than a decade been beset by macroeconomic imbalances, structural excess capacity, forced labor and economic coercion. He noted that G20 leaders had committed in 2016 to address excess industrial capacity, yet ten years later the distortion it causes in the global economy has only grown worse. On forced labor, Greer said goods made with forced labor enter markets with an artificial price advantage, creating unfair competition for workers and businesses while eroding trust in the global trading system. After the meeting, Greer told reporters that G20 trade ministers were deadlocked over excess factory capacity and forced labor — a characterization that aligns with China's own account of disagreement over how those items were framed, underscoring that while the Milwaukee meeting preserved a formal multilateral structure, substantive consensus remained limited.

According to the “Chair's Statement” later issued by the US Trade Representative's office, the food-security joint statement defined “weaponization” as targeted government action to slow, stop, block or redirect trade in food, agricultural products or related inputs in order to extract unrelated concessions from other countries, warning that such coercive measures could disrupt agricultural and food supply chains, threaten food security for vulnerable populations, and damage producers' livelihoods. Multiple media outlets also reported that on industrial overcapacity, a “handful” of G20 members explicitly rejected the US position, after which the USTR's office publicly said it was “severely disappointed” that no consensus had been reached on overcapacity and forced labor — a statement that further underscores the substantive deadlock on the meeting's core points of disagreement.