China has promised to “substantially” expand purchases of US goods after the latest round of trade talks with the US, and both sides planned further discussions to reach a breakthrough with only one month to go before the administration of US President Donald Trump is set to ratchet up tariffs.
Trump on Thursday said that he would dispatch two of his top negotiators to China following two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington.
US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are to visit the Asian nation in the middle of this month to hold the next round of talks.
Photo: AFP
A statement published yesterday by China’s Xinhua news agency said that the two sides made important progress during talks that were candid, specific and fruitful.
China has agreed to increase imports of US agricultural, energy and industrial products, as well as services, it said, without providing details.
The countries also agreed to strengthen cooperation on intellectual property rights and technology transfers, Xinhua said.
In a statement, the White House did not list any new commitments by either side, saying only that progress had been made and “much work remains to be done.”
The White House reiterated its threat to raise tariffs by March 1, unless a “satisfactory outcome” is reached.
Trump also raised the possibility of a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after receiving an official invitation from the Chinese leader.
Earlier, he said on Twitter that “no final deal will be made until my friend President Xi, and I, meet in the near future.”
One possibility would be for a meeting with Xi after the US president’s planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un late this month.
The teams have made “tremendous progress,” but that “doesn’t mean we have a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (劉鶴).
China has agreed to buy a substantial amount of US soybeans, he added, calling the offer a sign of good faith.
The agreement to continue talking raised hopes that the world’s two biggest economies could find a way to end the conflict before March 1, when the US has said it might more than double tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods.
However, there was little concrete evidence that they bridged yawning differences over the toughest issues, such as China’s policy on intellectual property and the heavy involvement of the state in its economy.
Lighthizer on Thursday told reporters that the two sides had engaged in an intense and detailed discussion focused largely on US demands this week for Chinese structural reforms.
However, he conceded that the two sides were only just starting to draft a common negotiating document, a sign of just how much work remained on nailing down the substance.
The US and China were still working on just what form a final deal would take, he said, but added that it would not be going to US Congress for a vote.
One possibility would be for the two sides to issue a memorandum of understanding, raising questions over how enduring such a deal would be and whether it would last into another US administration.
China has in the past walked away from such agreements.
The US has insisted that any deal should be enforceable and Lighthizer called that idea “foundational.”
However, people familiar with the discussions have said that the US side has yet to agree internally on what the right mechanism to enforce any agreement would be.
While China has signaled its willingness to have a deal be enforceable, officials have been toying with ideas such as having independent arbitration tribunals, which the US is unlikely to accept, one person familiar with the negotiations said.
Some in the US business community have remained wary of a quick deal, which they fear could leave some of the knottier issues in the economic relationship unresolved.
US Chamber of Commerce executive vice president and head of international affairs Myron Brilliant said that while progress had been made this week, the reality was that a lot of hard work remained.
“We’re at halftime of the Super Bowl of trade relations,” Brilliant told reporters on a conference call.
The slow pace of talks and mountain of issues remaining to be agreed sets up what could be a tense countdown to the March 1 deadline, with a meeting between Trump and Xi looming as perhaps the only way to bridge some gaps.
“The statement certainly signals progress, but at best limited progress on the core long-term structural issues that separate the two sides,” Cornell University trade policy professor Eswar Prasad said. “The statement ends with a not-so-veiled threat that China will need to offer more substantive concessions to enable a deal that would take further tariffs off the table.”
Lighthizer led the two days of negotiations in Washington with Liu, the highest-level talks since Trump met Xi on Dec. 1 last year and declared a 90-day trade truce.
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