Osaka: The United States and China agreed on Saturday to restart trade talks with Washington holding off new tariffs on Chinese exports, signaling a pause in the trade hostilities between the world’s two largest economies.
Commenting on a long-running dispute over China’s Huawei, President Donald Trump said U.S. firms would be able to sell components to the world’s biggest telecoms network gear maker where there was no national security problem.
The truce offered relief from a nearly year-long trade standoff in which the countries have slapped tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s imports, disrupting global supply lines, roiling markets and dragging on global economic growth.
“We’re right back on track and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters after an 80-minute meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in Osaka, western Japan.
Trump said while he would not lift existing import tariffs, he would refrain from slapping new levies on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods – which would have effectively extended tariffs to everything China exports to the America.
“We’re holding back on tariffs and they’re going to buy farm products,” he said at a news conference, without giving any details of China’s future agricultural product purchases.
“If we make a deal, it will be a very historic event.”
He gave no timeline for what he called a complex deal but said he was not in a rush.
