Top U.S. officials will travel to China next week in a bid to finalize a new trade deal, administration officials said Tuesday.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will travel to Beijing to talk to their counterpart, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, according to multiple reports. Liu will then follow up by heading to the U.S. the week after that to continue the negotiations.
These will be the first face-to-face talks between officials since President Trump agreed to hold off on raising tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods at the beginning of March. The White House had hoped to have one-on-one talks between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Palm Beach, Fla., this month, but those talks were tentatively pushed back into April.
Both sides are trying to iron out remaining issues before the respective presidents meet. The talks have been snagged over issues of whether the Trump administration will lift trade sanctions before it has definitive confirmation that China has moved first to address concerns and whether Beijing will agree to allow the administration to immediately apply tariffs if it is deemed in violation of the terms of the deal.
Lighthizer told the Senate Finance Committee last week that he believed they were in the final weeks of talks before an agreement is announced.
