Washington said there was still “significant work” to be done in trade talks with Beijing, with officials from the US and China set to continue negotiations next week via video conference. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders made the remarks after both sides said there had been progress on the text of a trade deal in the latest talks that wrapped up in Washington on Friday, though they were cautiously optimistic over whether a deal could be reached in the coming weeks. In a statement, Sanders said the two sides had discussed intellectual property, forced technology transfers, non-tariff barriers, agriculture, services, purchases and enforcement. “Significant work remains, and the principals, deputy ministers and delegation members will be in continuous contact to resolve outstanding issues,” she said. White House adviser Larry Kudlow said trade negotiators would continue their talks next week by video link, in a further step to end the nine-month trade war. “We are making headway in a lot of areas. That includes enforcement, that includes IP [intellectual property] theft, that includes forced technology transfers, ownership, cyberspace, commodities and all the rest of it,” Kudlow said on Bloomberg Television. “Those are of course in the middle of the negotiations that are ongoing but we’ve come further and farther than ever before.” Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He met US President Donald Trump on Thursday, with Trump saying the two nations would know “over the next four weeks” whether a trade deal could be reached. Chinese state media said significant progress had been made during the different rounds of talks, but a deal could not be rushed through. A China National Radio commentary said negotiations were expected to get tougher as the talks approached the final stage. The US demands cover intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers, along with cutting subsidies to state-owned enterprises, and China would face penalties if it did not fulfil promises made in the trade deal. China, meanwhile, has demanded all US tariffs imposed since July be lifted. Washington could extend an olive branch to Beijing by delaying the sale of F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan after a trade deal is agreed, Time magazine reported on Thursday, citing unidentified US officials. But Taiwan’s foreign affairs and defence ministries denied there was any plan to delay the sale. China’s economy is hurting and a trade deal can’t come a moment too soon for Beijing Brock Silvers, managing director of investment advisory firm Kaiyuan Capital, said while Beijing had pledged to buy more US products, it was not enough for Washington. “Beijing’s new foreign investment law was a positive step, but lacks details and won’t even go into effect for almost another year. Thus there’s probably little chance that US negotiators will agree to an immediate removal of all tariffs,” Silvers said. “Progress has been made, and a deal in the next one to two months seems quite possible, but looks likely to include a wide variety of both promised reforms and continued tariffs,” he added. Nick Marro, an analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, said the enforcement mechanisms seemed to be “the main sticking point”. “China doesn’t have a great track record with implementing its previous trade commitments. This is the consequence of China’s trade behaviour from over the past decade – it has eroded a lot of diplomatic credibility,” he said. China refuses to give up ‘developing country’ status at WTO, despite US demands Marro also noted reports suggesting Beijing was considering offering foreign technology firms better access to China’s cloud market in one of its free-trade zones as a concession in the talks. “This would require a significant overhaul of China’s data governance policies, as well as alignment between economic policymakers and the national security apparatus. The latter has long seen foreign investment into telecommunications as a security risk, and it’s unlikely that this would change overnight,” Marro said. “Any trade agreement would also be blunted by the trajectory of China’s larger economic policy agenda, which remains committed to strengthening the role of the state and promoting economic self-sufficiency, primarily in the tech sector,” he added. “This will inevitably constrain any agreement aimed at improving market access.”