Divisions within the White House persist despite a publicly united front on the status of trade talks with China.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump and his top economic advisers have sent a series of conflicting messages about the status of trade talks with China: A deal is either imminent, still out of reach or somewhere in between.
Or, as Mr. Trump suggested on Thursday, \u201cWe are well on our way to doing something special\u201d with China or the United States could decide to \u201cwalk from a deal.\u201d
The Trump administration this week halted plans to raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports as the two countries try to agree on terms that would end a monthslong trade war between the world\u2019s two largest economies. The move was seen as a good-will gesture by Mr. Trump, who is eager to reach an agreement and has begun talking about a signing meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, perhaps in late March, at the president\u2019s Florida resort.
\u201cI think we\u2019re heading for a historic deal,\u201d Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said in an interview on CNBC on Thursday. \u201cThe outlook for a deal is very positive.\u201d
But other top advisers, including Mr. Trump\u2019s chief negotiator, have played down the prospect for a deal, outlining a tough road ahead as the United States tries to secure lasting promises from the Chinese.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said on CNBC that the United States and China were working off a 150-page document and that he hoped enough progress could be made so that the two presidents could appear at a summit meeting.
\u201cThis is a very, very detailed agreement for some very significant commitments,\u201d said Mr. Mnuchin, who was traveling in London. \u201cAnd these are structural commitments, but we still have more work to do.\u201d
Robert Lighthizer, Mr. Trump\u2019s top trade negotiator, was decidedly more cautious on Wednesday, saying both sides were making \u201creal progress,\u201d but it was still an open question as to whether an enforceable deal could be reached.
\u201cLet me be clear: Much still needs to be done both before an agreement is reached and, more important, after it is reached, if one is reached,\u201d he told House lawmakers during a Ways and Means Committee hearing.
The Trump administration has been trying to put a positive spin on the talks, in part to help mollify jittery investors who have sent financial markets tumbling in response to any signs of negative news on the trade front. Mr. Trump has publicly claimed that the tariffs have been helpful to the United States economy, but most economists say the tariffs are a drag on growth. Big multinational companies have begun attributing weaker profits to the trade dispute and the tariffs are beginning to affect consumer prices in the United States, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
A report released this week by the Institute for International Finance found that China\u2019s retaliatory tariffs on American goods have more than offset Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs. China\u2019s tariffs have depressed United States exports, causing America\u2019s trade deficit with China to expand last year. The biggest beneficiaries from the trade war, according to the report, are Brazil and Russia, which have increased both exports and imports with China.
Mr. Kudlow acknowledged that the talks had not been seamless, including last week, when a delegation of Chinese officials came to Washington to try to hash out details. He said that the second day of midlevel negotiations was canceled because of a lack of progress. Mr. Lighthizer, Mr. Trump\u2019s top negotiator, \u201cread them the riot act\u201d to get things moving, Mr. Kudlow said.
He added that progress has been made on the \u201cstructural\u201d changes that the United States wants China to make, but he suggested it is now up to Mr. Xi to finalize the terms of an agreement.
People familiar with the negotiations, who declined to be named because the talks were not public, said the Chinese had made offers to strengthen their laws around patents and copyrights, open their markets to foreign financial services firms and carmakers and bolster laws around the coerced transfer of technology.
But the Chinese have not made substantive commitments to overhaul state-owned enterprises, stop cybertheft or relax their tight restrictions on the movement of data that hamstring foreign technology firms, they said.
Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Lighthizer had clearly been working hard to improve Chinese behavior in a substantive sense. \u201cBut have we moved the bar since the beginning of the Trump administration? The answer is no,\u201d he said.
\u201cWe don\u2019t look at all close to meaningful enforced provisions on intellectual property,\u201d Mr. Scissors said. \u201cWe are nowhere close to a good deal.\u201d
Mr. Lighthizer defended his progress on the structural issues on Wednesday, but he cautioned that \u201cthere\u2019s no agreement on anything until there is an agreement on everything.\u201d
Mr. Mnuchin played down any disagreements among Mr. Trump\u2019s economic team, proclaiming that everyone had a \u201ccommon vision\u201d for an agreement.
There are also looming questions about how any deal would be enforced. Mr. Lighthizer said Wednesday that the Chinese had agreed to periodic meetings at the levels of office director, vice minister and minister that would allow the United States to keep tabs on China\u2019s behavior and air complaints from companies about unfair business practices. If China fails to keep its agreement, the United States would respond \u201cproportionally but unilaterally.\u201d
But enforcement remains a sticky subject among China\u2019s leaders. Details remain scarce about how such complaints would be adjudicated and whether China would agree to an arrangement that would force it to accept punishment from the United States without recourse.
Trump administration officials has supported a unilateral enforcement mechanism that would make the United States the sole judge of China\u2019s behavior. They do not appear to be considering a mechanism that would refer violations to the World Trade Organization, which Mr. Trump and Mr. Lighthizer have fiercely criticized for treating the United States unfairly.
Some White House officials privately expressed frustration on Thursday following comments made by Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, to The South China Morning Post . Mr. Cui said that some of the changes that the United States was asking the Chinese to make would take five to 10 years to accomplish.
The fallout from the latest round of negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program also represents a new wild card. In the past, Mr. Trump has expressed frustration with China when problems with North Korea arose and the collapse of negotiations this week could exacerbate that.
During a news conference in Vietnam on Thursday, after walking away from an agreement with North Korea, Mr. Trump said that he was also prepared to walk away from the China talks if necessary.
\u201cI mean, I am always prepared to walk. I\u2019m never afraid to walk from a deal,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I would do that with China, too, if it didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n