President Trump said Friday that his administration had reached a “substantial deal” on trade with Beijing but that the specific details remain to be worked out.
The deal involves China making $40 billion to $50 billion in additional purchases of U.S. farm goods while the White House stops a tariff hike previously scheduled to go into effect next week. Agreements were made on intellectual property and currency issues as well, Trump said.
“We’ve agreed in principle to just about everything. Now we are getting it papered,” Trump told reporters. He said the U.S. and Beijing would meet again in five or six weeks in Chile, by which time they expected the details to be ironed out.
The announcement follows two days of talks in Washington, D.C. The deal was scaled back from both side’s prior goals. The White House had previously demanded that China be held to specific written details. The specific intellectual property provisions would be worked out in “phase two,” the president said.
“We have a fundamental understanding on the key issues,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters. “We’ve gone through a significant amount of paper but there is more work to do. We will not sign an agreement unless we can tell the president this is ‘on paper.'”
Beijing had demanded the White House remove all existing tariffs on its products, but settled for not seeing them rise further. The administration had scheduled an increase in levies on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods to 30% on Tuesday, up from 25% now. Trump said the tariff increase could return if the current deal fell apart. The U.S. also has 15% tariffs on another $300 billion in goods.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that plans for 15% tariffs on an a further $80 billion in Chinese goods scheduled to go into effect on Dec. 15 could still go into effect. “The president has not made a final decision on that but there is plenty of time to make that decision,” he said. “That is certainly part of this process.”
The status of Chinese telecom company Huawei, which the U.S. has blacklisted, was not part of the deal. China had previously demanded it be part of the negotiations.
The deal would include Beijing purchasing additional U.S. soybeans, beef, pork, and lamb.
Business groups urged the U.S. and Beijing to work toward a broader deal. “We look forward to reviewing the details of this announcement and urge both governments to work toward making additional structural reforms in China and eliminating tariffs,” said the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of big businesses.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He met with Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer for talks Thursday and Friday.
