Trump: US, China 'very close' to trade deal

President Trump says the U.S. and China are "very close" to a phase one trade deal.

"We have a deal potentially very close," the president told "FOX and Friends" on Friday morning. "He [Chinese President Xi Jinping] wants to make it much more than I want to make it. I'm not anxious to make it. We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs."

Trump's comments come after Xi said earlier Friday that Beijing wants to "work for a phase one agreement on the basis of mutual respect and equality."

Trump said he didn't like Xi's use of the word "equality," because the U.S. is "starting off from the floor" and China is "already at the ceiling" due to the $500 billion a year Beijing is receiving from America.

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The 17-month-long trade war, in which the U.S. has imposed tariffs on some $350 billion of Chinese goods and threatened even more, has weighed on the world's second-largest economy. It grew only 6 percent in the three months through September, the slowest since record-keeping began in 1993.

Growth is expected to slow to 5.8 percent in 2020 as the trade war and growing debt levels are expected to remain a drag, the International Monetary Fund said in its October 2019 World Economic Outlook, potentially forcing Xi's hand to make a deal.

On Thursday, China invited U.S. trade negotiators to Beijing for face-to-face talks, which they hope to conduct before Thanksgiving, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. has not said whether it has accepted the invitation.

China has called on the U.S. to roll back tariffs as part of a phase one deal, but Trump has ruled that out.

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"China would like to make a deal much more than I would," the president told reporters on Nov. 9. "They'd like to have a rollback. I haven't agreed to anything."