The US and China have agreed to an enforcement mechanism that ensures Beijing follows through on promised reforms if a deal to end the trade war is reached, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday. The mechanism would consist of monthly meetings at the office director level, quarterly meetings at the vice-ministerial level and semi-annual gatherings at the ministerial level, with these last meetings convened by Lighthizer and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, the top US trade negotiator testified. The mechanism appears to answer a US concern that any final agreement brokered by Washington and Beijing would be specific, measurable and enforceable at all levels of Chinese government – a condition Lighthizer made a point of in his testimony. “We have to have the ability to take proportional action unilaterally to make sure that we have a situation where [China is] following the contract,” he said. Enforcement has been one of the stickiest points in the negotiations, with the sides far apart on the issue as recently as last week. Washington had rejected Beijing’s offered solution of “joint task forces”, while Beijing had resisted any mechanism that threatened the country’s sovereignty, sources with knowledge of negotiations previously told the South China Morning Post . Several Chinese negotiators stay in US to continue trade talks Despite a new consensus on enforcement, Lighthizer stressed on Wednesday that major hurdles remained. “Much still needs to be done both before an agreement is reached and, more importantly, after it is reached, if one is reached,” he said. The terms of any deal reached would have to be implemented at all levels of governance in China, including “central”, “sub-central”, and “local”, the trade chief said. “It’s got to be across the board like that.” Lighthizer’s testimony before the committee – the main source of legislation on American customs duties and international trade agreements – came as China and the United States tried to strike a deal to end the months-old trade war. His appearance marked the first time the US House of Representatives – now controlled by the Democratic Party – has formally investigated US President Donald Trump’s China trade policy. Tensions between China and the US have eased somewhat since Trump said on Sunday that he would delay plans to raise tariffs on US$200 billion in Chinese goods if no deal was reached by March 1. Trump cited “substantial progress” in talks in Washington with a team led by Liu. US-China trade war talks begin with protesters rushing Beijing delegation Lighthizer said the deal-enforcement meetings would allow government representatives from both sides to raise concerns and get them addressed. The meetings would be a chance for Washington to air complaints about any systemic problems, and to pass on any specific grievances issued to the US administration from American companies, he said. “In many cases, those [complaints] are going to have to be anonymous because companies are afraid to come forward because they know what will happen if they do. They’ll have real-world effects, it will be negative.” If the problems ended up at the ministerial level and could not be resolved there, then the US “would expect to act unilaterally”, he said. “Proportionally, but unilaterally.” As his testimony got under way, Lighthizer repeated the oft-made US accusation that China’s “unfair trade practices” posed existential threats to the US economy. “Technology transfer issues, a failure to protect intellectual property, large subsidies and the cyber theft of commercial secrets” were among the threatening Chinese practices, he said. Lighthizer and Trump had differed publicly over the use of memorandums of understanding in the negotiations with China. The president denigrated them as “short-term” and a “waste of time”, prompting Lighthizer to announce that the documents would now be called “trade agreements”. China makes Mar-a-Lago summit a priority as trade war talks continue Both sides reached an agreement on Friday on currency manipulation as one of several MOUs covering a variety of industries, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. Trump has said that the nations were getting “very, very close” to a deal and that Chinese negotiators would be returning to Washington for more talks before he and Chinese President Xi Jinping met to sign a pact. Beijing has accepted Washington’s choice of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for the leaders to finalise a deal. Lighthizer clashed with one lawmaker on Wednesday over whether that final agreement would be submitted to Congress for approval. “We have no intention of submitting it to Congress,” he said, responding to a question from Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, about when lawmakers would be able to view and approve the deal. “It’s an executive agreement.” ‘Ideological soul mates’: how a China sceptic sold Trump on a trade war Doggett said that any binding trade agreements could be sought only through congressional authority. But Lighthizer said a deal to end the trade war would be “a settlement of the 301 action”, referring to his office’s investigation into China’s trade practices that resulted in the levying of punitive tariffs in July. “It’s an executive agreement, which the Constitution gives the president the right to enter into,” he said. Lighthizer told lawmakers that in assessing the success of the agreement he would factor in the demands and suggestions that industry associations and experts had delivered to the administration over the course of its trade action on China. Addressing those points was “what I have as my objective”, he said. “It’s not just what I think.” Among the yardsticks by which the administration would measure an agreement’s success were provisions to enforce “real rules” around forced technology transfers, restrictions on government subsidies and intellectual property protection, Lighthizer said. The agreement’s section on IP protection alone would be about 27 to 28 pages long, he said. Additional reporting by Wendy Wu