Trump Will Meet With His China Trade Delegation Saturday As They Return From Talks

Donald Trump will meet on Saturday with U.S. officials that went to China to negotiate with Beijing over trade.

 

Trump tweeted late on Friday that the delegation had "long meetings" with Chinese leaders and business representatives. The meeting will plan to "determine the results" of the trade talks.

The president added that "it is hard for China in that they have become very spoiled with U.S. trade wins!"

America's delegation arrived in China on Thursday and was led by led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. The discussions were expected to cover a wide range of U.S. complaints about alleged unfair trade practices in Beijing.

During the negotiations, the Trump administration demanded a $200 billion cut in the Chinese trade surplus with the U.S., sharply lower tariffs and advanced technology subsidies, Reuters reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Beijing also asked the U.S. to ease sanctions on Chinese technology firm ZTE, Reuters reported. America banned U.S. firms from exporting products to the company, a move ZTE said could threaten its survival.

The meeting between the U.S. and China was the latest step in the escalating trade tensions between the two countries which have threatened each other with tariffs. Last month, Trump laid out a list of products that could come under proposed tariffs, causing China to retaliate with its own tariff proposals.

Chinese state-run media struck an optimistic tone following the meeting. China daily said that despite "big differences" between the U.S. and China, the two nations agreed to continue the dialogue over trade.

"The biggest achievement of the two-day talks that concluded on Friday is the constructive agreement between Beijing and Washington to keep discussing contentious trade issues, instead of continuing the two-way barrage of tariffs, which pretty much brought the two countries to the brink of a trade war," the English-language website said in an editorial on Friday.