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Chinese and US negotiators have made "significant progress" in their latest round of trade talks, According to Chinese state media, US President Donald Trump said he would soon meet with his Chinese counterpart to try to reach a comprehensive deal. between the two largest economies in the world.
The two sides held "frank, specific and fruitful" talks over two days of high-level talks in Washington, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Friday, citing a statement by the Chinese delegation.
US negotiators also reported substantial progress after the conclusion of the negotiations, even if the White House pointed out in a statement that a The scheduled increase in tariffs on Chinese goods, amounting to $ 200 billion, ranging from 10% to 25%, was a "deadline" if no agreement was reached before March 1st.
Economists say this prospect – a strong escalation in the US-Chinese dispute that last year saw the two countries shake up tariffs on more than 360 billion dollars of bilateral trade – would be a blow to the global economy.
Speaking at the White House during a meeting Thursday with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, Mr. Trump said he was optimistic that economic powers could reach "the biggest agreement never concluded ".
With China's economic growth slowing down – partly because of Beijing's efforts to reduce debt – and investors anxious about the prospect of further trade disruptions, the stakes of the negotiations have become particularly important.
But the talks were complicated by Washington's aggressive actions against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. The US Department of Justice this week exposed heavy charges against the company and some of its leaders, including Meng Wanzhou, financial director and daughter of the founder.
"It remains to be seen whether an agreement can be reached if Meng remains in custody in Canada pending his extradition to the United States," said Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown, from Beijing.
He added that the Huawei saga had overshadowed trade negotiations, while Beijing was persuaded that the case against the world's largest supplier of telecommunications network equipment and the world's second-largest smartphone maker is " political character ".
No specific plan for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping has been announced but Trump said that there could be more than one meeting.
Hainan Island, off the coast south coast of China and close to Vietnam and Thailand – the two countries mentioned as the most likely places to hold a second summit later this month between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong UN – are presented as a possible site for the Trump-Xi meeting, just like Beijing.
"For reasons of face, Xi would prefer to meet Trump here," said Mr. Brown, of the Chinese capital, pointing out that Chinese President Jinping "needs an agreement at the present time" because of the slowdown in the Chinese economy.
"It sounds good to him, but it would also show the Chinese people that the US president has come here because he is so desperate to negotiate an agreement," Brown said.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were invited to convene a US negotiating team in Beijing in mid-February, dates to be determined.
'Happy Farmers' & # 39;
Prior to this week's talks, Beijing had proposed buying back US soybeans, a key export whose sales had fallen during the trade war, leaving American farmers in shock. Some exports have since resumed.
At Thursday's meeting with Trump, Liu said China had agreed to buy an additional 5 million tons of soybeans a day. The moving Trump responded favorably by saying that it would "make our farmers very happy".
The White House later clarified that the purchase would not be daily and no timetable had been set.
While China has proposed to increase its purchases of agricultural products, energy and other US products in an attempt to resolve trade disputes, negotiators have plunged into tougher issues, including Washington's calls for what Beijing is doing to protect the intellectual property of the United States and put an end to the policies that force the US companies to entrust their technology to Chinese companies.
Lighthizer said that there was "substantial progress" on these issues, including verification mechanisms to "enforce" China's monitoring of any reform commitments made.
"At this point, it's impossible to predict success, but we're in a situation where, if things turn out well, it could happen," said Lighthizer at the Oval Office meeting.
Later, he told reporters that the US goal was to make China's commitments "more specific, comprehensive and enforceable" with a mechanism to take action if Beijing breached its commitments, but refused to deal with specific questions.
The Reuters news agency previously said that such an enforcement mechanism would involve a rollback of US tariffs.
When asked if the two sides had discussed lifting US tariffs on Chinese products, Lighthizer said tariffs were not part of the talks.
A person familiar with the discussions said that many concerns about access to Chinese agricultural markets had been raised during the talks but little progress had been made.
Trump said that he did not think he would need to extend the deadline of March 1st. "I think when President Xi and I meet, every point will be accepted," Trump added.
But Trump has vetoed many proposed trade deals with China, choosing to go ahead with tariffs on Chinese products to get leverage.
Earlier, Trump had said on Twitter that he was looking for China to open its markets "not only to financial services, what they are doing, but also to our manufacturing, farming and other businesses and US industries, otherwise an agreement would be unacceptable! "
Washington's complaints about technology transfers and intellectual property protections, as well as accusations of the theft of US trade secrets in China and a systematic campaign of acquisition of US technology companies, were used by the United States. Trump administration to justify punitive tariffs on Chinese imports worth $ 250 billion.
China retaliated with its own tariffs, but suspended some and allowed some US soybean purchases during the negotiations.
The Chinese authorities have stated that their policies do not constrain technology transfers.
US tariffs imposed on Chinese products are only one of the front lines in Trump's efforts to reverse the global trading order with its "America First" strategy. It also imposed global tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, washing machines and solar panels and threatened to raise tariffs on imported cars unless Japan and Japan. European Union does not offer commercial concessions.
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