WASHINGTON, May 22 — Teams of cabinet members from China and the United States held a day of talks Tuesday to reduce economic tensions but ran into familiar disagreements over trade, currency issues and at least one new concern, the safety of Chinese food exports.
In the wake of reports about poison-tainted toothpaste and pet food from China, administration officials said that both the agriculture secretary, Mike Johanns, and the secretary of health and human services, Michael O. Leavitt, raised the issue of food safety throughout the day.
In a break in the talks, Carlos M. Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, told reporters, “They know this is an issue that concerns us and concerns the American people.”
Going further, Elaine L. Chao, the United States secretary of labor, said Mr. Johanns told the Chinese that the issue of safety of Chinese products “strikes at the heart of trust” between the countries. Ms. Chao said the Chinese responded by promising to strengthen regulatory agencies.
The Chinese delegation leader, Wu Yi, a vice premier, opened her presentation with a veiled criticism of recent American legal challenges to China over what the United States asserts are export subsidies and piracy.
“We should not easily blame the other side for our own domestic problems,” Ms. Wu said, as interpreted at the forum, which was open to the press for a while at the beginning. “Confrontation does no good at all to problem-solving.”
Ms. Wu said that efforts to “politicize” the Chinese-American relationship were “absolutely unacceptable.”
These were seen in the administration as code words intended as much for Congress as for the cabinet members in attendance. Administration officials say China continually expresses dismay at efforts in Congress to combat the trade deficit, saying that the moves are driven by politics, rather than being based on reason.
Ms. Wu introduced into the discussions the idea that China could improve the atmosphere by buying more American goods, rather than by opening its own markets to American products, according to James L. Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality.
He quoted her as saying that Chinese officials had gone to about 20 states in recent weeks and made billions of dollars in purchases to shore up American support for trade relations with China. Critics in Congress say such purchases will have no effects on their concerns, however.
Susan C. Schwab, the United States trade representative, said that the Chinese complaints were nothing new and that she and others sought to allay Chinese concerns that there was rising protectionist sentiment in Congress, but she also said she urged the Chinese not to ignore anxieties on Capitol Hill.
“Those issues are of particular concern to members of Congress,” Ms. Schwab said she told the Chinese, adding that Congressional concerns, focused on loss of jobs from imports, are “not necessarily a reflection of protectionism and anti-Chinese sentiment.”
The meetings were the second session of what the Bush administration calls a “strategic economic dialogue” established last year by President Bush and President Hu Jintao of China. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has led the American side in the talks, in Beijing last December and in Washington this week.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters at the end of the day under ground rules that he not be identified, said that Mr. Paulson told the Chinese that they needed to “rebalance” their economy by relying less on exports and more on consumer spending.
He also said that the issue of China’s intervention in currency markets to hold down the value of its currency, the yuan, had become a symbol of its slowness in adopting change.
China has allowed its currency to rise by a fraction of a percentage point in the last few days, apparently as a gesture to address American concerns that when the yuan is valued low against the dollar, exports are artificially cheap and imports artificially expensive.
Manufacturers, as well as Democratic leaders in Congress, are threatening to impose trade barriers or sanctions on Chinese goods if China does not let the value of its currency rise. The American trade deficit last year soared to $232 billion, a record. China accounts for about a third of the overall American trade deficit with the world.
Congress is poised to enact one or more bills this year that would impose sanctions on China if it did not do more to open its economy to American goods and services and allow the yuan to appreciate.
American officials said that they expected the talks this week would yield a package of measures aimed at opening China’s economy to American goods and investments. Announcements are expected on expanded air routes for American cargo and passenger carriers and on the sale of energy technology to China.
Ms. Schwab, the administration’s senior trade envoy, said she and others tried to explain to the Chinese that recent American legal actions against Chinese subsidies and protection of intellectual property were not intended to disrupt the Chinese-American economic relationship.
She said she and Mr. Gutierrez took “great pains” to explain “why our agencies made the decisions they did” on subsidies and piracy.
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