Dear Xi Jinping,

Could we interest you in 500 million metric tons of soybeans?

How about five Ford-class aircraft carriers and 465 F/A-18 fighter jets?

Forty trillion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas? Around 2.8 billion barrels of crude oil? Two and a half million Tesla Model X SUVs?

We’re just trying to make the math work here.

Negotiators from Mr. Xi’s government have offered the Trump administration a deal to buy $200 billion of American goods, in order to defuse escalating trade threats between the United States and China — including Mr. Trump’s vow to impose tariffs on as much as $150 billion of Chinese imports. The purchased goods would be an effort to reduce America’s trade deficit with the Chinese, which reached $375.2 billion last year, and which irritates Mr. Trump to no end.

Administration officials are confident such an agreement could be reached soon. A senior administration official said Friday that the Chinese would commit to reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers that hinder American goods from flowing into that country, allowing an additional $200 billion of American sales to China by 2020.