U.S. President Donald Trump attends the NATO leaders summit in Watford, Britain December 4, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville

WATFORD, England (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that trade talks with China were going “very well,” sounding more positive than on Tuesday when he said a trade deal might have to wait until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

“Discussions are going very well and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters said at a meeting of NATO leaders near London.

His comments on Tuesday, which raised the prospect of a long extension of the trade tensions between the world’s biggest and second-biggest economies, pushed down share prices sharply around the world.

Stocks rebounded on Wednesday when Bloomberg reported that the two sides were closer to agreeing how many tariffs would be rolled back in a “phase one” trade deal.

Investors fear that the U.S.-China standoff, which has marked Trump’s presidency since it began in 2017, will add to the slowdown in the global economy.