BEIJING (Reuters) - Top officials from China and the United States reached a consensus on some aspects of the countries’ trade row, but disagreements over other issues remain “relatively big”, according to China’s Xinhua news agency on Friday.
The two sides, though, committed to resolving their trade disputes through dialogue, state-run Xinhua reported.
And the U.S. negotiators agreed to bring up with U.S. President Donald Trump the question of a ban on U.S. companies selling goods and software to Chinese telecommunication equipment maker ZTE Corp after representations from the Chinese side, the report said. ZTE faced the seven-year ban after the U.S. said it failed to keep to an agreement it made after breaching U.S. sanctions.
The talks over the past two days have involved a high-level U.S. trade delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and top Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He, following months of threats and counter threats from both sides in a series of disputes over trade practices.
The U.S. team has already left Beijing and is heading back to the U.S., a U.S. official told Reuters early on Friday evening. The Americans have yet to give their account of the talks.
The trade discussions had been “candid, efficient and constructive,” Xinhua said, but gave almost no details on what the officials had agreed.
The officials exchanged opinions on resolving tariffs and non-tariffs measures, on expanding two-way investment and the protection of intellectual property, and on expanding U.S. exports to China and bilateral services trade, Xinhua reported. It gave no indication of what actions might be taken based on those exchanges.
“My impression was that (the talks) didn’t go well given the rhetoric,” said Kevin Lai, senior economist at Daiwa Capital markets in Hong Kong. “I think the
