US and Chinese officials are restarting negotiations in an effort to resolve the year-long trade dispute, with two days of talks due next week, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday.
The dialogue in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday will be the first face-to-face meetings since negotiations collapsed in May after President Donald Trump accused Beijing of reneging on its commitments.
Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will lead the US delegation. The White House said in a statement the talks, with Vice Premier Liu He, will “cover a range of issues, including intellectual property, forced technology transfer, non-tariff barriers, agriculture, services, the trade deficit and enforcement.”
Senior officials have spoken by phone twice in the last two weeks in the bid to jump start the negotiations.
Mnuchin said on CNBC he hopes to make progress but added there are “a lot of issues” pending so he expects another round of talks would follow in Washington.
At a meeting in Japan last month, US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to cease further hostilities in the year-long trade war while the two sides worked to revive negotiations. The countries have imposed tariffs on USD 360 billion in two-way trade and Trump has threatened even more punishing duties on Chinese goods.
That truce halted Trump’s plan to hit China with another round of punishing tariffs on USD 300 billion in goods. The International Monetary Fund warned that that step added to existing tariffs would cut global economic growth by 0.5 per cent.