Winning: U.S., Chinese trade negotiators will ‘speed up’ talks as Beijing agrees to buy $1.2 trillion worth of American goods

By Jon Dougherty

Trade talks between U.S. and Chinese negotiators were extended for two days on Friday as both sides agreed to “speed up” talks in a bid to finalized an agreement ahead of a March 1 deadline when Washington planned to impose higher tariffs on some $200 billion worth of imported goods from China.

Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He said Beijing and Washington would â€œredouble efforts and speed up negotiationsâ€ on trade, as talks aiming to end a tariff war between the two biggest economies will continue for at least another 48 hours.

As President Xi Jinpingâ€™s special envoy, Liu is leading Chinaâ€™s latest trade negotiations in Washington, the South China Morning Post reported.Â He said both sides had made â€œpositive progressâ€ over the previous two days in a number of areas including the ongoing trade imbalance, agriculture, forced technology transfers, intellectual property protection, and financial services. He added that a deal is â€œvery likelyâ€.

â€œIn the next step, the two sides will redouble efforts and speed up negotiations to accomplish the great missions assigned by the two leaders,â€ Liu said, according to state news agency Xinhua on Saturday.

The SCMP noted:

Liu made the remarks during a meeting with US President Donald Trump and his top advisers in the Oval Office on Friday, when Trump suggested that he would meet Xi to push for a final deal next month at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach, Florida where the two leaders had their first face-to-face meeting about two years ago.

â€œUltimately, I think the biggest decisions and some even smaller decisions will be made by President Xi and myself,â€ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. â€œWe expect to have a meeting some point in the not-too-distant future â€¦ And I think President Xi and I will work out the final points. Perhaps and perhaps not.â€

Talks were supposed to wrap up on Friday but negotiators agreed to an extension, leading most analysts hopeful that at least some progress was being made.Â Lu Xiang, a China-US specialist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it’s possible that negotiators just needed more time to finalize key parts of an agreement, but added the U.S. could make a push for some last-minute concessions as well.



