Negotiators from China and the United States will hold two more rounds of trade talks by early May as the countries’ attempts to end their months-old trade battle intensify, US media reported on Thursday.
Chinese officials were putting the finishing touches on the language they intend to use in their latest offers, diplomatic observers told the South China Morning Post.
But US businesspeople watching the talks cautioned against excessive optimism, saying “systemic issues” remain to be fixed.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plan to travel to Beijing the week of April 29, according to Bloomberg.
The next week, Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He will go to Washington for talks, which officials hope will lead to the announcement of a deal and the details of a signing summit, probably for late May, according to the report.
Plans for more talks follow Mnuchin’s statement last week that the parties had agreed to set up enforcement offices in each other’s country to monitor the trade deal’s implementation, resolving a major sticking point in the talks.
When US President Donald Trump received Liu in the White House on April 4, he said it would take about four weeks to reach a framework for the agreement and another two weeks to set details.
It is not known whether the negotiators will resolve all the outstanding issues within Trump’s time frame, but the diplomatic observers said they expected a deal to be reached soon.
“I think they are entering the final stage, and the discussion will rather focus on the wording of the deal document than principal issues,” said Wang Huiyao, president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Chinese non-governmental think tank based in Beijing.
China and the US have been locked in a tit-for-tat tariff battle since July 6.