Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that the Trump administration had “a lot of work left to do” to beat a looming March 1 deadline to reach a trade deal with China.
Mnuchin made the comment after confirming that he, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and other Trump administration officials were headed to China next week to continue the latest round of talks.
“Ambassador Lighthizer and myself and a large team are on our way to Beijing next week. We are committed to continue these talks,” Mnuchin told CNBC. “We’re putting in an enormous amount of effort to try to hit this deadline and get a deal. So that’s our objective.”
Mnuchin added that it wouldn’t be productive to speculate on whether a deal could reached. “We have a lot of work left to do … If we can’t get to the deadline, that’s not because we haven’t worked around the clock,” he said.
[Related: Trump’s handling of the shutdown may have weakened his hand in China trade talks]
President Trump said in his State of the Union address Tuesday that the new trade agreement “must include real, structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit and protect American jobs.”
The administration has said that if it cannot make progress towards a deal by March that it will increase tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent, up from their current level of 10 percent. The administration has been ambiguous as to what would constitute progress, however. The business community has urged the administration back down on the tariffs.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He was in Washington last week to meet with Trump to discuss trade policy. Little progress appeared to come from the talk, though China did commit to purchasing five million metric tons of soybeans.
