- U.S., China to Resume Trade Talks this Week
U.S delegates will arrive in China on Thursday to resume high-level trade talks as the two world’s largest economies try to reach an agreement on trade.
Robert Lighthizer, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, President Trump’s top trade negotiators, will be visiting China on Thursday and Friday, while Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will visit the U.S. the following week.
People familiar with the negotiation said both sides remain determined to reach an agreement and avoid escalating the eight-month trade war that has seen them imposing duties on $360 billion of each others’exports.
In a radio interview this week, Lighthizer said he wants to get a deal, but he’s “not necessarily hopeful” one will happen. “We’re working on it,” Lighthizer told National Public Radio. “If there’s a great deal to be gotten, we’ll get it. If not, we’ll find another plan.”
Last week, some anonymous U.S. negotiators said China is holding back on previous agreements due to the failure of President Trump to assure the world’s second-largest economy that taxes imposed on its goods would be removed.
However, because president Trump is desperate for a result ahead of 2020 re-election and China needs the deal to stimulate her slowing growth, experts believe a deal is likely this time.
“The president is desperate for a deal,” said Clark Packard, trade-policy counsel at the R Street Institute, a think tank based in Washington. “I don’t think he wants to go into 2020, running for re-election, without something here.”
