China Officials Coming to US for High-Level Trade Talks This Week - White House

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US President Donald Trump will meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He to discuss trade on Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a press briefing.

"On Thursday, the President will meet with the Chinese Vice Premiere who is here this week for continued talks", Sanders said Monday.

Moreover, a delegation of Chinese officials will be visiting Washington for two days of trade talks with the Trump administration on Wednesday and Thursday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

"Today, President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States will welcome an official delegation from China for a series of meetings from January 30 to 31, 2019, to discuss the trade relationship between the two countries", Sanders said Monday.

The US delegation will be led by Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer and include Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy Larry Kudlow, and Assistant to the President for Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, Sanders noted.

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"The United States principals will be accompanied by senior officials from the White House, USTR and the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, State and the Treasury", the statement said.

The meetings are a part of the agreement reached by Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires on 1 December 2018, to engage in 90 days of negotiations with a view to achieving needed structural changes in China that affect trade between the two countries, Sanders added.

Mnuchin, speaking at a White House news conference, said the two sides were trying to tackle "complicated issues", including a way to verify enforcement of China's reform progress in any deal with Beijing.

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"We want to make sure that when we get a deal, that deal will be enforced," Mnuchin said. "The details of how we do that are very complicated. That needs to be negotiated. But IP [intellectual property] protection, no more forced joint ventures, and enforcement are three of the most important issues on the agenda".

Mnuchin also said that there had been "significant movement" in the talks so far, and there will be around 30 days for further negotiations after the meetings in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday to reach an agreement before a 2 March deadline for increasing US tariffs on Chinese goods.

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China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war since Trump announced in June that $50 billion worth of Chinese goods would be subject 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, levying duties on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected in a new report last week that any further increase in trade tensions between Washington and Beijing could take a heavy toll on trade growth in Latin American and Caribbean countries.

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