FLASH: Saturday, Presidents Trump and China’s Xi agreed to another pause in their trade dispute thus removing any immediate threat looming over the global economy even as a lasting peace remains in their sights.
The 2 sides have agreed to restart trade negotiations that broke down last month and that the US agreed to put no new tariffs on Chinese goods.
President Trump said he would extend existing tariffs to cover almost all imports from China into the United States if the meeting brought no progress on wide-ranging US demands for economic reforms.
At the start of Saturday’s talks, President Xi told President Trump he was ready to exchange views on fundamental issues and stressed the need for dialogue not confrontation.
“Cooperation and dialogue are better than friction and confrontation,” he said.
President Trump told reporters he had an excellent meeting with the Chinese leader and that talks were “back on track”. The 2 met in Japan’s City of Osaka, on the sidelines of a summit of leaders of G-20.
“We had a very good meeting with President Xi of China, excellent, I would say excellent, as good as it was going to be,” President Trump said. “We discussed a lot of things and we’re right back on track and we’ll see what happens.”
Ahead of the talks, President Trump had said a fair trade deal would be “historic.”
The G-20 leaders will agree Saturday to accelerate reforms of the World Trade Organization, but stop short of calling for the need to resist protectionism in their closing communique.
America First!
Stay tuned.
