Trade talks resume with no deadline in sight
WASHINGTON — A day after agreeing to resume trade talks with China, President Donald Trump and his top advisers said no timeline existed for reaching a deal and suggested the two sides remained as far apart as they were when talks broke up in May.
The comments came as the administration continued to ease restrictions on China, removing eight companies from the Commerce Department’s blacklist and taking steps to allow Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, to purchase U.S. technology. Those steps, while welcomed by U.S. businesses, fueled concerns among some lawmakers that Trump was giving away too much in return for vague promises from Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy more U.S. goods.
“We’re moving along toward a reciprocal but a good trade deal, a fair trade deal,” Trump said of China during remarks in Seoul, South Korea, on Sunday. “And we’ll see where that goes, but we had a very, very good feeling with President Xi and myself.”
The truce reached at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, over the weekend will forestall another round of punishing tariffs Trump had threatened to impose on nearly all Chinese imports. But it did little to resolve the Trump administration’s primary concerns, including its insistence that China agree to codify intellectual property protections and other changes in Chinese law.
The ability to resolve those concerns, including those that led to the breakdown in talks, is only expected to get harder on both sides of the Pacific, as Trump heads into a reelection campaign and Xi faces pressure to reinvigorate China’s slowing economy. That political calculus seems to have pushed both leaders to agree to a truce that could perpetuate the trade dispute but prevent an escalation that could destabilize the world’s two largest economies.
Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, said no timetable existed for completing negotiations but that the United States was hoping to capitalize on the progress made during talks that broke down in May, which he said had gotten the two countries 90 percent of the way to a deal.
The administration had essentially blacklisted Huawei over concerns that it posed a national security threat and that its efforts to dominate the next generation of wireless technology, known as 5G, would put the U.S. at a disadvantage.
Top officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, have publicly warned that Huawei poses a security threat and urged other nations not to use its telecom equipment.
While it remains unclear exactly what type of technology Huawei will now be allowed to buy from U.S. companies, the fact that the president appeared to be using the telecom giant as a pawn in broader trade negotiations drew condemnation from some of his biggest allies in Congress.