US and China agree to restart trade talks

The United States and China on Saturday agreed to restart trade talks after a highly anticipated meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka.

“We’re right back on track and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters after an 80-minute meeting with Xi.

Trump said the US would not impose further tariffs in a trade war that other world leaders have warned could threaten the global economy, and added that the world’s two biggest economies would restart negotiations on a trade deal.

“We will continue to negotiate, and I promise that at least for the time being we won’t be adding additional [tariffs] … We’re going to work with China to see if we can make a deal. China will consult with us and will be buying a tremendous amount of food and agricultural products, and they’re going to start doing that almost immediately.”

He had said at the start of the meeting that he was open to a “historic fair trade deal” with China. “We are totally open to it,” he told Xi, who called for “cooperation and dialogue” instead of confrontation.

Trump said: “We want to do some things that will even it up with respect to trade. We were very close but something happened where it slipped up a little bit,” he added, in a reference to the failure of previous talks.

The truce offered relief from a nearly year-long dispute 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.

The trade dispute had escalated when talks collapsed in May after Washington accused Beijing of reneging on reform pledges. Trump raised tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200bn of Chinese goods, and China retaliated with levies on US imports.