According to a report from The Associated Press, senior U.S. and Chinese negotiators have agreed on a framework to get their trade negotiations back on track after a series of disputes that threatened to derail them, both sides have said.
The announcement came at the end of two days of talks in the British capital that wrapped up late Tuesday.
The meetings appeared to focus on finding a way to resolve disputes over mineral and technology exports that had shaken a fragile truce on trade reached in Geneva last month. It’s not clear whether any progress was made on the more fundamental differences over China’s sizeable trade surplus with the United States.
“First we had to get sort of the negativity out and now we can go forward,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters after the meetings.
Asian stock markets rose Wednesday after the agreement was announced.
The talks followed a phone call between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week to try to calm the waters.
Li Chenggang, a vice minister of commerce and China’s international trade representative, said the two sides had agreed in principle on a framework for implementing the consensus reached on the phone call and at the talks on Geneva, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Further details, including any plans for a potential next round of talks, were not immediately available.
Li and Wang Wentao, China’s commerce minister, were part of the delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng. They met with Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at Lancaster House, a 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace.
Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator, said the disputes had frittered away 30 of the 90 days the two sides have to try to resolve their disputes.
They agreed in Geneva to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that sparked fears of recession. The World Bank, citing a rise in trade barriers, cut its projections Tuesday for U.S. and global economic growth this year.
Click here to read the full report from The Associated Press.
