U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at the White House Thursday, the last day of a second round of negotiations aimed at resolving the ongoing trade war between the economic superpowers, reports VOA News.
Writing on Twitter Thursday morning, Trump said meetings “are going well with good intent and spirit on both sides.” He added that “No final deal will be made until my friend President Xi, and I, meet in the near future to discuss and agree on some of the long standing and more difficult points.”
Liu He, China’s chief trade negotiator, met Wednesday with U.S. negotiators led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at the Executive Office building next to the White House to continue discussions over Washington’s long-standing complaints that Beijing forces U.S. companies to transfer their technology advances to Chinese firms and that it limits access to China’s vast market.
The talks were threatened to be overshadowed by Monday’s indictment by U.S. prosecutors of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies.
The indictment alleges Meng, Huawei and the company’s affiliates conspired to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran and deceived financial institutions and the U.S. government of their activities. China is angered over Meng’s arrest in Vancouver by Canadian authorities on December 1 for extradition to the United States.
The trade talks are the result of an agreement last month between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to stop the tit-for-tat tariff conflict between the two countries for 90 days starting on New Year’s Day.
The Trump administration has imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to compel Beijing to change its trading practices, prompting Beijing to retaliate with its own tariff increases on $110 billion of U.S. exports.
If a deal is not reached by March 2, U.S. tariffs will rise from 10 percent to 25 percent.