Trump hopes for deal with China, end trade war

TIL Desk/World/New Delhi/ US President Donald Trump expressed optimism regarding the possibility of reaching an ambitious agreement with China to stop the ongoing trade war between the two nations, after a round of negotiations which brought “advances”.

Trump received the Chinese Vice Premier, Liu He, at the White House on Thursday, two days after bilateral negotiations aimed at preventing the US raising its tariffs from the current 10 per cent to 25 per cent on Chinese products from March 1.

“This is going to be a very big deal or it’s going to be a deal that we’ll just postpone for a little,” Trump told the media following his meeting with Liu and the US and Chinese negotiating teams. The meeting in the Oval Office began with the reading of a letter that President Xi Jinping had sent to Trump, and in which he asked him to continue negotiating in “a climate of mutual respect” and to “meet halfway”.

Liu revealed that China was willing to buy “five million tonnes of soybeans” from the US. “That’s going to make our farmers happy. That’s a lot of soybeans,” said the US President, who considered the announcement a sign of “goodwill” on the part of China.