‘Without this a deal would be unacceptable!’: Trump makes trade talk demand

US President Donald Trump, boasting of good progress in first-day trade talks with China, said on Thursday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping planned to meet soon to work out the toughest issues in the negotiation.

Although he said that Wednesday’s first meetings between American and Chinese negotiators had gone well, Trump added in a morning tweet that “No final deal will be made until my friend President Xi, and I, meet in the near future to discuss and agree on some of the long-standing and more difficult points. Very comprehensive transaction.”

However, he warned in a further tweet: “Looking for China to open their Markets not only to Financial Services, which they are doing, but also to our Manufacturing, Farmers and other US businesses and industries.

“Without this a deal would be unacceptable!”

At the start of the month, sources told the South China Morning Post that previous talks between the US and China had seen Beijing refraining from committing to substantially altering its tech and government subsidy policies.

Instead, the sources said, it had focused on pledging massive purchases of American goods to reduce trade imbalance with the US.

Trump has not yet directly involved himself in the current round of trade talks, but reassured his followers that so far things had gone well.

“China’s top trade negotiators are in the US meeting with our representatives. Meetings are going well with good intent and spirit on both sides,” he tweeted.

“China does not want an increase in Tariffs and feels they will do much better if they make a deal. They are correct.”

The tweets came as high-stakes trade talks moved into their second day in Washington, with China’s economic tsar, Vice-Premier Liu He, and a delegation of around 30 economic officials and assistants meeting an American team led by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Both sides hope that this round of meetings will set up a framework that will ultimately put an end to a months-long trade war that has taken bites out of China’s economy and sent turbulence through the US stock markets.

Among the priorities in the current talks are protection of US intellectual property, the forced transfer of US technology through joint ventures, and enforcement mechanisms to verify that China follows through on any promised changes.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the South China Morning Post after talks on Wednesday that both sides had “had a good discussion”.

However, it remains to be seen if the two sides can build on this “good” start with talks on Thursday, after which Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He is expected to meet US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

“China’s representatives and I are trying to do a complete deal, leaving NOTHING unresolved on the table,” Trump tweeted on Thursday, not mentioning his trade team.

“All of the many problems are being discussed and will be hopefully resolved. Tariffs on China increase to 25 per cent on March 1, so all working hard to complete by that date”.

Diplomatic sources and observers said both countries are expected to hold one or two more rounds of trade talks to map out a plan to end to their tariff war before the March 1 deadline.

The talks come two-thirds of the way into a 90-day truce that was agreed upon by the countries’ presidents on December 1 on the sideline of the G20 summit in Argentina.