United States Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that he hopes to progress in the upcoming trade talks with China and that he expects his team will have a "productive discussion" with the Chinese negotiators. The current round of meetings started today in China and the next round is already scheduled to take place in Washington, where the Chinese Premier Liu He is traveling next week.
Mnuchin was previously reported saying that the trade talks are now at a critical point as the teams head into talks this week. Both teams continue discussing Chinese subsidies and ending the waivers the United States gave to China and other countries to keep importing Iranian oil without consequences.
“We’re getting into the final laps,” said Mnuchin said as he was heading to China with the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, “We’ve made a lot of progress," he added while declining to predict whether the negotiations are going to be over at the end of the week.
The trade war has lasted more than a year, and efforts to end it have been exhaustive on both sides. Trump pushed tariffs on about $250 worth of Chinese goods in order to make the Asian economic power to change certain economic practices that go against the United States’ interests. Forced technology transfers, intellectual property issues, and subsidies are among the main practices that bother the current administration.
Whether both sides will reach an agreement soon is not clear. The concerns about the enforcement of an upcoming trade deal are also still relevant despite Mnuchin's claims about the substantial process that both sides have been made on an enforcement mechanism.