Clock ticks for China and US to hammer out details of partial trade deal
- Negotiators have a few weeks to build on the talks in Washington and lay out how the agreement will be implemented
- ‘Talking while fighting’ could become the new normal, influential Chinese social media outlet says, with nothing of substance changing between the two countries
Wrapping on two days of high-level trade talks in Washington on Friday, US President Donald Trump said the two nations reached a “very substantial phase-one deal” in which the US would suspend the 5 percentage point tariff increase on Chinese imports scheduled for Tuesday and China would buy more US agricultural products.
Details of the initial deal would take three to five weeks to be determined, Trump said, adding that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping might ratify it during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile next month.
China agreed to buy up to US$50 billion more in American agricultural products, and the two nations said they had made progress on technology transfers and opening up China’s financial services market.
Presenting a letter from Xi to Trump, China’s top negotiator, Vice-Premier Liu He, said: “We very much agree that to get the China-US economic relationship right, it’s something that is good for China, for the United States, and for the whole world, and we are making a lot of progress towards a positive direction.”
But Chinese state media responded cautiously to the developments, with state news agency Xinhua saying that “substantive progress” had been in the “candid, efficient and constructive discussions”. At the same time, a commentary in Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said China would never trade in its principles.