President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders Friday aimed at advancing his trade agenda only days before he's scheduled to come face to face with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a meeting the president expects will be " a very difficult one ."

Some members of Trump's administration, however, have said the timing of the orders so close to their boss's meeting is a coincidence.

"During the campaign, I traveled the nation and visited the cities and towns devastated by unfair trade policies. Probably one of the major reasons I'm here today – trade," Trump said Friday afternoon from the White House.

The text of the orders was not immediately made public, but Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and trade czar Peter Navarro provided clues as to what the documents contained during a briefing with reporters Thursday night, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer followed up with further explanation during a Friday briefing.

Ross said one of the orders will call for a sweeping investigation into "every form of trade abuse and every non-reciprocal practice that now contributes to the U.S. trade deficit," according to The Associated Press .

The government is expected to have 90 days to prepare a country-by-country report looking at where and why trade imbalances exist and what can be done to potentially mitigate them.

"It will demonstrate the administration's intention not to hip-shoot, not to do anything casual, not to do anything abruptly, but to take a very measured and analytical approach, both to analyzing the problem and therefore to developing the solutions for it," Ross said.

Spicer echoed those sentiments Friday, saying the report will "allow us to make smarter decisions on behalf of the American people about our trade policy of our country going forward."

The second order "addresses the current lack of enforcement of one of our strongest tools in fighting unfair trade practices – countervailing duties," Spicer said. The order will specifically target countries accused of "dumping" products in the U.S. – or selling imports at values lower than domestic producers can reasonably compete with in order to eat up market share.

"If a foreign company, often due to its being partly or entirely government run or subsidized, is able to flood American markets with an artificially low steel, for example, they price American companies out of the system," Spicer said, calling the order a "significant step in accomplishing the president's promise to end unfair trade practices once and for all."

Spicer's reference to steel imports is notable in that former President Barack Obama's administration last year raised tariffs on such imports to combat what the government viewed as unfair dumping.

Among the international steel imports hit with higher tariffs, China was far and away the most severely sanctioned.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at China for "ripping us on trade," at times vowing to label the country a currency manipulator and at others suggesting the U.S. is already embroiled in a trade war with China. As he introduced the executive orders, China was the only country Trump named specifically.

"We’re having the president of China and a large group of China’s representatives [travel to Mar-a-Lago next week]. And we’re going to get down to some very serious business," Trump said. "But it's been very bad what's been happening to our country."

Trump's meeting with Xi will be the first face-to-face interaction between the leaders of the world's two largest economies and comes only months after Trump made China one of his primary targets on the campaign trail.

The president tweeted earlier in the day Friday that the U.S. can "no longer have massive trade deficits and job losses" in relation to China. He also warned that American companies "must be prepared to look at other alternatives."

But Spicer hit back at a suggestion that Trump's latest executive orders were somehow directed specifically at China. During Friday's hearing, he called the actions "broad-based" and said "a lot of countries" contribute to America's trade deficit.

"On the trade front, we've got serious concerns with what they're doing, our trade practices with them," Spicer said of China, noting that Trump wants a "very good and healthy and respectful relationship" with the country.

However, he said the dumping order, in particular, is "not something that's targeted at any specific country."

Navarro issued a similar assessment, saying Thursday night that "nothing we're saying tonight is about China."

"Let's not make this a China story. This is a story about trade abuses. This is a story about an under-collection of duties," he said.

Ross, meanwhile, went against the grain of his colleagues on Friday during an appearance on CNBC's " Squawk Box " by criticizing China directly. He said it's "perfectly obvious that if China hadn't been such a huge net-exporter it never would have grown at the rate that it did."

"We are in a trade war. We have been for decades. The only difference is our troops are finally coming to the ramparts," Ross said generally. "We didn't end up with a trade deficit accidentally."