„We’re having very substantive discussions on trade,” Trump said, without elaboration, at the White House.
President Trump is dispatching several of his top economic advisers to China next week for high-level talks aimed at easing trade tensions, several weeks after the White House and Beijing threatened each other with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U. S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer will be among those on the trip, Trump said Tuesday. The president specified no particular goals for the delegation, but he said the trip is being organized at Beijing’s request. Chinese officials in recent weeks have repeatedly complained that the Trump administration has refused to say which concessions could resolve Trump’s complaints or even which U. S. official is in charge of the trade fight.
“We’re having very substantive discussions on trade,” Trump said, without elaboration, at the White House.
Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, welcomed the announcement. “We’d be encouraged by any indication that both sides are going to move toward some meaningful negotiation,” he said. “We’ll be interested to see what they put on the table.”
Mnuchin first disclosed plans for a possible China trip this weekend on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The inclusion of Lighthizer, the president’s top negotiator and a veteran of decades of trade battles, may herald a round of bare-knuckled haggling.
