The US and China are seeking an agreement to end the trade war unleashed by Trump’s protectionist agenda, which has harshly criticized China’s trade policies.
A US delegation will travel from February 14 to 15 to Beijing to continue the trade negotiations, two weeks before the deadline given by the US president, Donald Trump, to elevate the tariffs on a large part of China’s imports, the White House reported Friday.
At the head of the delegation are Foreign Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “discuss the bilateral trade relationship.”
Previously, he said the note, will be held meetings of preparation between their respective teams from February 11.
Within the US delegation will be David Malpass , current undersecretary of International Affairs of the Treasury and nominated this week as a candidate to preside over the World Bank by the White House.
The US and China are seeking an agreement to end the trade war unleashed by Trump’s protectionist agenda, which has harshly criticized China’s trade policies.
After assuring that the eventual agreement would depend on a meeting with Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping , this week the US president ruled out a meeting before March.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump said he was working with Xi on a new trade agreement that “must include a real and structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce the chronic trade deficit and protect jobs.”
In December, Trump agreed to suspend for 90 days, until March 2, its plan to raise tariffs to 25 percent on hundreds of Chinese products.
The question now is whether this period will be extended and if the liens will be maintained at the current 10 percent rate.
In total, Washington has imposed tariffs on Chinese products worth 250 billion dollars since July, and Trump had threatened to sanction goods for another 267 billion dollars, which would far exceed the volume of imports from China to the US, which in 2017 stood at 506 billion.
China has applied reciprocal measures to more than 60 billion dollars in US imports, almost half of the 130 billion dollars it bought in 2017.
