The Trump administration is hedging on whether it will be able to sign a trade deal with Beijing during a meeting in Chile next month. A failure to get a deal completed would increase the odds that the Trump administration imposes new tariffs on China in December.
“If it’s not signed in Chile, that doesn’t mean that it falls apart. It just means that it’s not ready,” a Trump administration official told Reuters. “Our goal is to sign it in Chile. But sometimes texts aren’t ready. But good progress is being made, and we expect to sign the agreement in Chile.”
President Trump announced an agreement with Beijing on Oct. 11 that allowed the administration to hold off on proposed new tariffs on China. The agreement required aspects of the deal to be set in writing over the subsequent months, something Trump and other officials said could be a two- or three-phase process. A meeting with Beijing officials set for next month in Chile would be used to assess progress on the deal, the administration has said.
“We are looking probably to be ahead of schedule to sign a very big portion of the China deal. And we’ll call it ‘phase one,’ but it’s a very big portion,” Trump said Monday regarding the Chile meeting.
Beijing is pushing the White House to abandon plans to impose new tariffs, starting on Dec. 15, of 15% on $156 billion worth of Chinese goods. The White House has indicated that the tariff threats are needed to ensure Beijing sticks to the agreement made earlier this month.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said Friday that the White House was “close to finalizing some sections of the agreement.”
