Trump met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in the oval office yesterday as the two-day top level US-China trade talks concluded. Trump said in during the meeting that “we’re not quite at that stage yet”, referring to the meeting with Chinese President Xi JinPing. He noted the representatives of both sides were “coming to a conclusion, except for certain very important points.” When he and Xi meets, “we want to have it down so that we have certain points that we can discuss and, I would say, agree to.” For now the meeting wasn’t set up yet.
Nevertheless, Trump hailed that Liu’s promise to buy five millions tons of soybeans per days. He said ” it really is a sign of good faith for China to buy that much of our soybeans and other product that they’ve just committed to us prior to the signing of the deal — is something that makes us very proud to be dealing with them.”
On the March 1 negotiation dead line, Trump said it has stayed and “we haven’t talked about extending the deadline.” But he added that “at a certain point, you’re going to have — this is a very complex, and a very large — it’s the largest transaction ever made, to be perfectly straight.” Regarding Huawei’s case Trump said “it will be discussed” at some point. And it’s “very small compared to the overall deal, but that will be discussed.”
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer reiterated in the meeting that ” We focused on the most important issues, which are the structural issues and the protection of U.S. intellectual property, stopping forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, agriculture and services issues, and enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.” And, “both sides agree this agreement is worth nothing — if we can get an agreement, it’s worth nothing without enforcement.” Lighthizer will go to China shortly, after Chinese Year Year.
During the meeting, Liu also noted the need to establish three key themes, including “enforcement or implementation.”
