White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says US-China trade deal ‘closer and closer’
- Kudlow points to ‘great progress’ on IP theft and forced transfer of technology
- Top officials to continue talks via teleconferencing this week
US President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser says the US and China are “closer and closer” to a trade deal, and that top-tier officials would be talking again this week via “a lot of teleconferencing”.
Larry Kudlow’s “guarded optimism, maybe more than guarded optimism” on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday came after China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that progress was made during talks in Washington that ended on Friday.
High-level US and Chinese officials met on the heels of discussions in Beijing the previous week.
Chinese negotiators, led by Vice Premier Liu He, and their US counterparts discussed the text of an agreement regarding technology transfers, intellectual property protections, non-tariff measures, services, agriculture, trade balance and enforcement, Xinhua said.
“We’ve made great progress on the IP theft. We’ve made good progress on the forced transfer of technology,” Kudlow said. The Chinese have acknowledged their problems, which was a very big hurdle, and “what wasn’t on the table, is on the table,” Kudlow said.
Despite Kudlow’s optimism, Xinhua, in a separate commentary on Friday, said that “the remaining issues are all hard nuts to crack”.