In a major development, Washington has reportedly agreed not to impose new tariffs on its exports, China said on Saturday adding that US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will hold a meeting to restart trade talks.
Trump and Jinping kicked off a hotly awaited meeting on Saturday in Japan’s Osaka on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.
Donald Trump said that Washington was “open to a historic trade deal with China” as he met his Chinese counterpart who said that “dialogue is better than confrontation”.
“It would be historic if we could do a fair trade deal,” Trump said at the start of the high-stakes meeting to thrash out a tariff war between the world’s top two economies.
“We are totally open to it,” added Trump.
Following the meet, Donald Trump said his high-stakes trade talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping was “excellent” with negotiations now “back on track”.
“We had a very good meeting with President Xi of China… I would say excellent,” Trump said.
“We are right back on track,” he added.
Trump, however, did not give any other details, saying that an official statement would be released by the two sides later in the day.
At the beginning of their meeting, Xi recalled the start of “ping-pong diplomacy” in 1971 in Nagoya, Japan, where Chinese and US players had friendly interactions at the 31st World Table Tennis Championships, reports Xinhua news agency.
Trump had imposed $200 billion levies on Chinese imports to force Beijing to adhere to intellectual property laws and had also threatened to tax nearly all of the products China exports to the US.
As the world’s Group of 20 economies kicked off their two-day summit in the Japanese port city of Osaka, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the strained relations between Washington and Beijing over trade were “difficult” and contributing to a slowdown in the global economy.