US, China to hold trade talks in Beijing next week

China on Friday confirmed that a vice-ministerial level delegation from the United States will visit Beijing next week for “proactive and constructive talks” to flesh out trade agreements reached between President Xi Jinping and US counterpart Donald Trump in Argentina last month.

A working team led by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish will come to China to have “positive and constructive discussions” with Chinese counterparts, China’s commerce ministry said in a statement on its website.

The ministry said the two sides “confirmed” the dates in a phone call on Friday morning, but did not provide other details.

The talks on January 7-8 will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two countries over trade since Xi and Trump agreed on a 90-day truce in Buenos Aires.

At a summit in Argentina late last year, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a ceasefire, deciding to hold off on imposing more tariffs for 90 days starting December 1 while they attempt to negotiate a deal.

The two nations have been locked in a trade war for much of the past year, disrupting the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and stoking fears of a global economic slowdown.

Now China and the United States face a key March deadline for talks to end the damaging trade war, or Washington could proceed with a sharp hike in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods originally set for January 1 and Beijing could retaliate.

Trump has said talks toward a deal are progressing well, but it is unclear if Beijing will yield to key U.S. demands over trade imbalances, market access, and alleged Chinese abuses of intellectual property.

China's benchmark stock indices in Shanghai and Shenzhen gained over 1 percent on Friday morning after confirmation of the trade talks, erasing early morning losses.

Data this week showed a marked loss of momentum in the world’s two largest economies at the end of last year.

U.S. factory activity slowed more than expected in December, according to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), while Chinese data on Monday showed its manufacturing activity contracted for the first time in more than two years.