US-China trade: Trump to receive update from negotiating team
President Trump will meet with members of the U.S. trade team to receive an update on the talks with China, the White House said on Saturday.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and trade adviser Peter Navarro will join Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, while other top officials including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow will join by phone, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
The meeting follows Trump’s comments on Friday during a press conference in the Rose Garden, where he said he was optimistic about the status of the trade discussions, saying they were going “extremely well.”
“We’re a lot closer than we ever were in this country with having a real trade deal,” Trump said. “We’re covering everything, all of the points that people have been talking about for years and said couldn’t be done.”
The president spoke hours after Mnuchin, who along with Lighthizer was part of the U.S. delegation that traveled to China earlier in the week, tweeted that talks with China’s Vice Premier Liu He were “productive.”
The two nations – the world’s largest economies – have been involved in the trade dispute for nearly a year and have continued to impose billions of dollars of tariffs on one another’s goods. The Trump administration has criticized China for its unfair trade practices and has accused the country of stealing American intellectual property and technology – both of which are at the heart of the trade dispute.
Both trade teams are expected to meet this week in Washington.