Trade talks between the U.S. and China are setting the foundations for a “very productive meeting” between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Washington’s trade envoy said on Sunday.
Beijing and Washington are seeking to calm a trade war after Trump threatened new tariffs on Chinese goods in retaliation for China’s expanding export controls on rare earth magnets and minerals.
“I think that we’re getting to a spot where the leaders will have a very productive meeting,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after meeting his Chinese counterparts, according to media reports.
On his first visit to Asia during his second term, Trump landed in Malaysia Sunday morning to attend the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which groups together Southeastern Asian countries. This is his first stop in a five-day Asian tour that is expected to include to a bilateral meeting with Xi in South Korea.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he hopes the talks with Xi would yield “a complete deal.”
Raising the expectations for the meeting, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said American and Chinese officials reached a “very successful” framework in talks this weekend. The two sides discussed agricultural purchases, TikTok, fentanyl, trade, rare earths and the overall bilateral relationship, he said.
Bessent described the talks as “constructive, far-reaching and in-depth, and giving us the ability to move forward to set the stage for the leaders meeting in a very positive framework,” according to Bloomberg.
Chinese Trade Representative Li Chenggang described the discussions as intense and hailed progress in the talks, Bloomberg reported. “The current turbulences and twists and turns are the ones that we do not wish to see,” Li told reporters, adding that a stable China-U.S. trade and economic relationship is good for both countries and the rest of the world, according to the report.
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