According to a Reuters report, the text of US-China trade deal might not be ready for signing at the APEC summit in Chile on November 16-17. An unnamed official was quoted saying “If it’s not signed in Chile, that doesn’t mean that it falls apart. It just means that it’s not ready. 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.”

Though, White House spokesman Judd Deere insisted, “As the president said several weeks ago, we have reached a phase-one agreement with the Chinese and both sides are working to finalize the text for a signing in Chile.”

Separately, it’s reported that the amount of farm purchases is a sticky point for the text of the agreement. US is pushing China to spell out that it would buy as much as USD 50B of American farm products. But China would want to make it flexible and make the purchases based on market conditions. An unnamed Chinese officials said “China does not want to buy a lot of products that people here don’t need or to buy something at a time when it is not in demand.”

And separately again, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun warned on Tuesday that US criticism on China’s Xinjian policy is not helping trade negotiations. The US, UK and 21 other states pushed China to stop detaining ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang Zhang said, “the trade talks are going on and we are seeing progress. I do not think its helpful for having a good solution to the issue of trade talks.”

Intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, market access, and market distortion by subsidies to State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are among the core issues in US-China trade negotiations. According to a Reuters report quoting unnamed sources, the US is stepping back on its demand regarding SOEs in China.

An important tricky point regarding SOEs is that it’s tightly interwind with the Chinese government’s industrial policy. That’s deeply rooted in the fundamental nature of China’s system, a “systematic rival” to major economies in the world as seen by EU. While China is making concessions in other areas, it’s an area that the socialist country won’t concede ground. A source said that “if U.S. negotiators define success as changing the way China’s economy operates, that will never happen”.

In addition, China is expected to ramp up purchases of US goods as part of the trade deal. But who’s going to make the purchases? It’s most likely the SOEs which the government has direct control on. Thus, another sources said “the purchasing, for example, reinforces the role of the state sector because the purchasing is all being done through state enterprises.”