U.S. suspends new tariffs on Beijing

WASHINGTON — The United States has put on hold its plan to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese products as it presses forward with negotiations to reduce its trade deficit with Beijing, a top priority of President Donald Trump.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said on Sunday that the two countries had made progress as they concluded three days of intense trade negotiations in Washington late last week. The planned tariffs on $150 billion worth of Chinese goods are off the table while the talks proceed, he said.

“We’re putting the trade war on hold,” Mr. Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

After finishing the talks in Washington, the two sides released a joint statement on Saturday that offered little detail about what had been decided. Mr. Mnuchin said on Sunday that they had agreed on a “framework” under which China would increase its purchases of American goods, while putting in place “structural” changes to protect American technology and to make it easier for American companies to compete in China.

While American officials had signaled last week that China had agreed to increase purchases by $200 billion, Mr. Mnuchin declined to confirm that figure. “We have very specific targets; I’m not going to disclose what they are,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “They go industry by industry.”

He suggested that under a deal, China would make big increases in its purchases of American agricultural products and energy over the next several years.

Larry Kudlow, Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, said on Sunday that the $200 billion number was a “rough ballpark estimate” that both sides had used. It is a figure that simply “interests the president a lot,” he said, and is not an indication that a deal of that size is imminent.

“They are offering to make structural reforms, such as lower tariffs and lowering nontariff barriers, which will permit us to export billions and billions more goods to China,” Mr. Kudlow said of China on ABC’s “This Week.”

Economists have voiced doubts about the $200 billion figure, an amount equivalent to more than half the annual American trade deficit with China. They say it would be difficult to increase American exports by anything close to that figure, given structural hurdles in China and limits to how much the United States could increase its production of goods.

Mr. Mnuchin rejected the notion that the United States as part of the trade talks was revisiting its penalties on ZTE, the Chinese telecommunications company that has been crippled by a Commerce Department ban that prevents it from buying American components.