US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he may meet Chinese President Xi Jinping more than once as they look to finalise a deal to end a trade war now entering its seventh month. In remarks in the Oval Office as two days of talks between Washington and Beijing wrapped up in the US capital, Trump also said it was “possible” that he would combine a trip to meet Xi with a February visit to see North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. While meeting China’s Vice-Premier Liu He and other members of the visiting trade delegation, Trump hailed “tremendous” progress in this week’s discussions, which aimed to narrow the gap between the countries as the March 1 deadline for a deal draws closer. Liu, the de facto chief of China’s economic policy, told Trump that his country had already started purchasing 5 million tonnes of US soybeans , to which Trump said: “That’s going to make our farmers very happy.” China says important progress made in frank Washington trade talks Liu also used the White House meeting to deliver a letter from Xi, which included a pledge to stay in close communication with the US administration and the hope that both sides would meet halfway during negotiations. “As I often say, I feel we have known each other for a long time, ever since we first met,” said the letter, which was read out to Trump in the company of both delegations, Vice-President Mike Pence and cabinet members including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “I cherish the good working relations and personal friendship with you. I enjoy our meetings and phone calls, in which we could talk about anything.” Trump called the letter “beautiful”. Trade talks become theatre as Trump launches charm offensive The meeting was followed by a statement from the White House that described the two days of negotiations as “intense and productive”. The talks covered a wide range of issues, including how US companies are pressured to transfer technology to Chinese firms, the need for stronger protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in China as well as the numerous tariff and non-tariff barriers faced by American companies in China, according to the statement. China still needs to address a slew of other issues, including cybertheft, government subsidies to state-owned enterprises, opening up agricultural and manufacturing markets, and currencies and the trade deficit, the statement said. United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also said discussions would continue next month, including a trip by him and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to Beijing for the talks with Liu. US firms willing to hand over technologies to do business in China Government subsidies and forced technology transfer were among the issues about which China failed to bring substantial ideas to the negotiating table on Wednesday, according to the US Chamber of Commerce’s Myron Brilliant, who has been in close communication with US negotiators throughout the talks. A crucial component of the week’s discussions was “enforcement, enforcement, enforcement”, said Lighthizer, referring to mechanisms needed to verify that China follows through on promised changes. March 1 was “a hard deadline”, reiterated the White House, after which tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese imports will increase from 10 to 25 per cent unless a deal is reached. Earlier in the day, Trump appeared to suggest that the deadline could extend beyond March 1. “I think we can do it by March 1”, he told reporters. “Can you get it down on paper by March 1, I don’t know.” But during Thursday’s White House meeting, Trump appeared to contradict those ambiguous comments, telling reporters: “We haven’t talked about extending the deadline. The deadline is March 1 … I don’t think we have to extend [it].” Chinese academic predicts a long and protracted trade war Both sides will be hoping that Liu’s appearance at the White House will be more fortuitous than his last. In May 2018, amid attempts to stave off impending tariffs, Liu led a trade delegation to Washington, a trip that also featured a photo-op in the Oval Office. Just days after that visit, however, Trump declared that he was “not satisfied” with the progress of those talks, effectively undermining an announcement by his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, that he had secured sufficient concessions from Beijing to declare the trade war “on hold”. ‘Without this a deal would be unacceptable!’: Trump makes trade talk demand But Trump’s flurry of statements over the course of Thursday that negotiations were going well and that he was open to visiting Xi for another round of talks made it “very clear that President Trump is very engaged in these talks”, said Brilliant, who is the US Chamber’s executive vice-president and head of international affairs. “The last time a president was this engaged in the trade talks was President Bill Clinton in the run-up to getting China into the WTO,” he said. “So that’s very significant that he is personally engaged here.” In Twitter remarks on Thursday morning, Trump played up his role in the discussions, despite the fact that this week’s round of negotiations were delegated to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and others from the Treasury and Commerce departments. “China’s representatives and I are trying to do a complete deal, leaving NOTHING unresolved on the table,” Trump wrote, adding that he and Xi would “meet in the near future to discuss and agree on some of the long-standing and more difficult points.” China and US face two more rounds of trade talks before deadline Though a face-to-face meeting with a senior Chinese official was “standard diplomatic protocol”, former Mexican ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo said it was especially significant in the context of trade because it reflected Trump’s personal involvement in proceedings. “The one thing we have learned over the past two years is that the chief trade negotiator of the United States is President Trump,” said Guajardo, citing the president’s rejection of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s self-declared trade truce in May 2018. Although Guajardo, now a senior director at McLarty Associates, acknowledged there was always the risk that Trump did not possess a sufficient understanding of the fundamental issues to effectively negotiate, he said “the bigger risk is for the US negotiators to say something and then be undermined.” Additional reporting by Jodi Xu Klein