Xi To Meet With Mnuchin, Lighthizer in Beijing on Friday - Reports

BEIJING (Sputnik) - Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold meetings with members of the US delegation that arrived in China to continue trade talks — including US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — in the Chinese capital of Beijing on Friday, local media reported Wednesday, citing sources.

"Xi is scheduled to meet both Lighthizer and Mnuchin on Friday", one of the sources told the South China Morning Post newspaper. Another source confirmed that Xi was set to meet with the US delegation in Beijing later in the week, without specifying the exact date.

The first source added that the host country would hold a banquet for the US delegation in a Chinese restaurant, and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He would attend the event.

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While a new round of high-level US-Chinese trade talks will be held in Beijing from Thursday to Friday, the US delegation arrived in the Chinese capital for preparatory negotiations on Monday.

China and the United States have engaged in a trade war after US President Donald Trump announced last June that the United States would subject $50 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent tariffs in a bid to fix the US-Chinese trade deficit. Since then, the two countries have exchanged several rounds of trade tariffs.

At the G20 summit in Argentina in December, Trump and Xi agreed to a 90-day truce to allow room for a new trade agreement. The truce is set to end on 1 March.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he could consider pushing back the March deadline for reaching a trade agreement with China if the two countries are close to a deal. Trump noted that a large US delegation is currently in China, and said things were going well with the negotiations.

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On 31 January, Trump said the trade talks were going well and added that a final deal would not be made until his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, slated for the "near future". However, Trump told reporters last week that no meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping has been scheduled yet.

According to media reports, the meeting may take place in Vietnam on 27-28 February.

During State of the Union address last week, Trump told a joint session of US Congress that any trade deal with China must include real, structural change to end unfair trade practices.

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