Washington.- President Donald Trump said today that his team is “very close” to reaching a trade agreement with China, and that he hopes to know in a month if he can schedule a summit with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the country to finalize the details of the pact.
“There is a very, very good chance that we will reach an agreement, and it would be good for both countries,” Trump said during a meeting at the White House with China’s deputy prime minister, Liu He.
Several media had pointed out that Trump planned to announce during the meeting a date for his summit with Xi, but the president indicated that he will only do so if his negotiating team closes a pact.
“If we reach an agreement, we will have a summit,” Trump explained.
He added that he hopes to know “in the next four weeks” if it is possible to schedule that summit, but believes that “there is a good chance” of that happening, and that the appointment would be “here”, without specifying whether it referred to the White House, to your private club in Mar-a-Lago (Florida) or another part of the country.
If it is specified, Trump predicted that the agreement with China will be “epic” and “monumental”, and that it will “make happy” both the American farmers and those who work in the technology industry.
USA and China have been negotiating since December to try to contain the trade war in which they were implicated last year as a result of the protectionist agenda of Trump, who has harshly criticized the trade policies of the Asian giant.
Trump warned at the end of last year that, if he did not reach an agreement with China before March 1, he would raise China’s 200 billion dollars worth of tariffs on Chinese imports from the current 10% to 25%.
That deadline has finally extended beyond that deadline, and the talks have picked up pace, with a visit to Beijing last week by a US delegation, followed by this trip to Washington by Liu and his team.
Since December, Beijing has adopted goodwill measures, such as lowering tariffs on imported vehicles, resuming the purchase of soybeans or submitting a bill to prohibit the forced transfer of technology.
But, as a condition for not increasing its tariffs to China, which affect everything from textiles and food to fuel, Washington also wants Beijing to commit to structural changes in its economy to, among other things, protect the intellectual property of the country’s companies. .
In addition, Trump has warned that, even if it reaches an agreement with Beijing, it will maintain some tariffs on Chinese products “for a substantial period” until it is sure that China will comply with what was negotiated. (EFEUSA)
