The morning talks on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly come as US lawmakers appear closer than ever to acting on long-standing threats to penalize China for keeping its currency artificially low.
Wen staged a preemptive defense of China's policies on Wednesday, flatly rejecting any link between the level of the Chinese yuan, or renminbi, and US trade deficits.
"The main reason for the US trade deficit with China is not the renminbi exchange rate, but the structure of trade and investment between the two countries," he said in a speech to US executives and China experts in New York.
Wen's talk came after a US House of Representatives committee scheduled a vote for Friday on a China currency bill that would treat China's "undervalued" currency as an export subsidy and allow the US Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties on Chinese products to offset the undervaluation.
Critics inside and outside Congress say China deliberately undervalues its currency by as much as 25 percent to 40 percent to give Chinese companies an unfair trade advantage, hurting US exports and employment.
Obama said on Monday that China had not done enough to raise the value of the yuan, keeping up Washington's tough rhetoric on Chinese policy six weeks before congressional elections that will focus on the US economy and jobs.
SOME CONCILIATORY WORDS, TOO
Pushing back against the US pressure, Wen said China, too, had big job considerations and the 20 percent appreciation of the yuan demanded by US lawmakers would cause many bankruptcies in the Chinese export sector, where firms operate on thin margins.
"The conditions for a major appreciation of the renminbi do not exist," Wen said, adding the appreciation of China's currency demanded by US lawmakers would not bring jobs back to the United States because American firms no longer make most of labor-intensive products China exports.
Prospects for action in the Senate, which would also have to approve legislation, are uncertain. Key senators have said time may be too tight since lawmakers hope to leave Washington in just a few weeks to campaign ahead of the Nov. 2 elections.
The US Treasury Department said it would "carefully examine" any proposals put forward by Congress.
But Wen, known in China as the leader dispatched to placate disgruntled workers or disaster victims, also offered conciliatory remarks in his speech to the U.S-China Business Council and National Committee on US-China Relations.
"I fully believe that all the disputes and friction in China-US trade at the moment can be resolved," he said.
He added that China wanted a "strong and stable US, just as the US needs a strong, stable China" and called for more bilateral macroeconomic policy coordination to ease imbalances.
In past months, Washington and Beijing have also quarreled over US arms sales to Taiwan and sympathy for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
The South China Sea — where China, Taiwan and several Southeast Asian countries have contending territorial claims and Beijing has complained about spying by US naval ships, is also a bilateral point of contention.
