President Donald Trump is facing increasing blowback from Congress over a tweet that indicated his administration would ease criminal penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE to save Chinese jobs. | Alex Wong/Getty Images U.S., China make progress on trade, but talks to continue A final deal may not come together before Chinese Vice Premier Liu He returns to Beijing on Saturday, but negotiations appear to be headed for success.

The United States and China have made progress on a deal aimed at boosting U.S. exports to the Asian giant by about $200 billion in coming years, but do not have a final agreement, two administration officials said late Friday.

The two sides were still working out the wording of a joint statement, but hoped to issue it tonight, the officials said. Talks are expected to continue at a later date.


"This deal is not going to fall apart. POTUS has blessed it now," one senior administration official said late Friday afternoon.

In exchange for taking steps to increase purchases of U.S. goods and liquefied natural gas, China wants Trump to back off his threat to impose tariffs on $50 billion to $150 billion worth of Chinese goods and to restrict Chinese investment in certain sectors of the U.S. economy.

That is still being negotiated, and the administration wants a "trust but verify" approach that keeps those as possible remedies if China doesn't deliver on promised reforms, one of the officials said.

Heading into the talks, there were expectations that Liu, the head of the Chinese delegation, was coming with promises to make big purchases of agricultural, energy and other products to bring bilateral trade into balance. However, Beijing's offer is actually to open its market in a number of sectors by reducing trade barriers, the official said.

"I think the key point in all this is that the trade talks are going very well," White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox Business Network on Friday. "I mean actually, the president himself has shown more enthusiasm and optimism about this trade deal than I've ever seen him."

Liu met with Trump on Thursday and gave "an excellent presentation" of steps Beijing was willing to make to bring bilateral trade into balance and address other U.S. concerns, Kudlow said.

"He outlined a whole bunch of remedies for the trade deficit issue and the barriers — the tariff and non-tariff barriers — and also of course the technology theft problems," Kudlow said.

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The Chinese government described the talk as “positive, constructive and fruitful," according to China Central Television.

A deal that provides substantial new market openings for U.S. exports could find strong support among business groups concerned that Trump would settle for an agreement that provides a short term sales bump without addressing major problems.

The U.S. business sector was reserving judgment until it sees the details.

"We’d be pleased if the two sides make enough progress to dial back on tariffs," said John Frisbie, president of the U.S.-China Business Council. "But, they need to then move quickly to substantive negotiations on the structural issues that frustrate market access in China for American companies and get improvements in intellectual property and technology protections."

In that vein, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer weighed in on the negotiations Friday, urging Trump not to accept a Chinese pledge to buy American goods in exchange for dropping a threat to impose tariffs.

"Don’t let President Xi play you," Schumer wrote on Twitter. "Trading some short-term purchases of American goods and giving up on China’s theft of American intellectual property (which are our family jewels that will create millions of good paying jobs) is the art of a bad deal. Stand strong."

Trump also is facing increasing blowback from Congress over a tweet on Sunday that indicated his administration would ease criminal penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE to save Chinese jobs.

The Commerce Department in April banned ZTE from doing business with American companies for seven years after it was caught violating the terms of a record $1.19 billion penalty agreement for illegally selling U.S. telecommunications equipment to Iran and North Korea. That prompted ZTE to recently announce it was ceasing operations.

One source following the negotiations said he believes China's main priority in this week's negotiations is obtaining relief for ZTE, which is the country's second biggest telecommunications company.

But in a sign of the concern in Congress over loosening the ban, the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday unanimously approved an amendment that would keep the current sanctions in place. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) also called it "deeply troubling" that Trump would use the ZTE penalties as a bargaining chip in negotiations.

Two senior Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, Reps. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) also weighed in with a letter on Trump to Friday arguing "it is absolutely inappropriate for penalties assessed by the Department of Commerce on Chinese telecommunications company ZTE to be traded off as part of any trade deal with China."

Congress' intense scrutiny of the issue makes it hard for Trump to deal on that point, but it might be palatable if China agrees to reforms to its highly restrictive cybersecurity regime that would make it easier for American companies to do business there, according to the source following the negotiations.

Meanwhile, in one sign of easing trade relations between the world's two largest economies, China announced earlier on Friday that it had ended an anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigation on imports of U.S. sorghum, which is used mainly for animal feed. China said it determined the tariffs were not in the public interest and would increase costs for consumers.

U.S. grain producers heaved a sigh of relief, although China still has retaliatory duties on many U.S. agricultural products in response to duties that Trump imposed on Chinese steel and aluminum. In addition, Beijing has threatened to impose duties on an additional $50 billion worth of U.S. agricultural, chemical and other goods if Trump follow through on his plan to hit China with new duties because of intellectual property theft.

"U.S. sorghum exports to China are mutually beneficial, and we are grateful [China's Commerce Ministry] looked at the facts of the matter and decided to restore this trade," Tom Sleight, president and CEO of the U.S. Grains Council, said in a statement. "Today’s development is also a step in the right direction for U.S.-China trade relations, and we hope it is a platform for further lessening of tensions and challenges facing U.S. grains exports to China."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the name of the Fox channel that ran the interview with White House adviser Larry Kudlow. It was Fox Business Network.