WASHINGTON—The United States and China ended two days of high-level talks on Jan 31, leaving all the hopes for a deal to the next…
WASHINGTON—The United States and China ended two days of high-level talks on Jan 31, leaving all the hopes for a deal to the next meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. A wide gap remains between U. S. demands and what Beijing is prepared to offer.
“I think we’ve made tremendous progress,” Trump told reporters during his meeting with China’s Vice Premier Liu He in the Oval Office.
He said he might meet Xi “maybe once or maybe twice,” to conclude a trade deal.
“When President Xi and I meet, we want to have it [differences] down so we have certain points we can discuss—and I would say agree to—but we are not quite at that stage yet,” he said.
The U. S. and China officials met in Washington on Jan. 30-31 to try to resolve their differences and reach an agreement before the March 1 deadline. U. S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer led the second and the final day of the trade talks with China’s top trade negotiator Liu and his team. The high-level negotiations were followed by a closing meeting between Trump and Liu, where both sides continued to express optimism.
This was the highest-level gathering since Trump met with Xi on Dec. 1,2018, when they declared a 90-day truce on tariffs.
At the meeting, Lighthizer said that both sides made progress but still have many unresolved issues.
He also said the talks focused on solving structural issues and enforcement of a potential agreement, suggesting that sticking points mainly center around Trump’s priorities, which include ending intellectual property (IP) theft and forced technology transfer.
