WASHINGTON -- China will increase its purchase of U.S. goods and services in order to reduce its trade imbalance with the United States, the two countries said in a joint statement Saturday.
The White House said that China had committed to buying more agriculture and energy exports, but it noted that U.S. officials would at some point go to China to work out the details.
"To meet the growing consumption needs of the Chinese people and the need for high-quality economic development, China will significantly increase purchases of United States goods and services," the joint statement said. "This will help support growth and employment in the United States."
The statement, though, didn't place a dollar figure on the increased purchases by China, nor did it address a comment by President Donald Trump's top economic adviser suggesting China had agreed to slash its annual trade surplus with the U.S. by $200 billion. The U.S. merchandise trade deficit with China hit a record $375 billion last year, about two-thirds of the U.S.' $566 billion global trade deficit in 2017.
Vice Premier Liu He, a special envoy of China's President Xi Jinping, held talks in Washington on Thursday and Friday with U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Liu said the two sides ended with a pledge not to engage in a trade war, according to a Xinhua news agency report.
Last month, the Trump administration proposed tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports. Trump later ordered Lighthizer to seek up to an additional $100 billion in Chinese products to tax.
China responded by targeting $50 billion in U.S. products, including soybeans -- effectively lowering their value. The prospect of an escalating trade war has shaken financial markets and alarmed business leaders.
The statement Saturday didn't mention whether the talks had made progress in easing the trade standoff between the countries, but Liu said the two sides agreed to stop "slapping tariffs" on each other, Xinhua reported.
The delegations last week also discussed expanding trade in manufactured goods, and each side agreed to strengthen cooperation on intellectual property. China will "advance relevant amendments" to its laws and regulations in that area, including its patent law, the White House said.
One issue is whether the United States should relax export controls on certain products and technology, according to two people who were familiar with the negotiations but were not authorized to speak publicly about them. The controls determine where -- and in what quantity -- products with military applications or advanced technologies, like semiconductors that power smartphones and computers, can be exported to other countries.
Mnuchin, who has been leading the negotiations, has pushed for relaxing the rules, partly to secure China's purchase of additional goods from the United States in the coming years. Mnuchin's plan has faced stiff opposition from Defense Department officials, who fear such sales could compromise U.S. national security, one of the people said.
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the Treasury Department.
On Friday morning, Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters that China had offered to reduce its annual trade surplus with the U.S. by "at least $200 billion."
"The number's a good number," Kudlow said outside the White House.
Chinese media contested that total. The Foreign Ministry denied Friday that it had offered to reduce its trade deficit with the United States by the $200 billion amount, and on Saturday the state-run People's Daily, considered a mouthpiece for the Chinese government, called the reports "a misunderstanding."
Information for this article was contributed by Ros Krasny, Saleha Mohsin, Justin Sink and Jenny Leonard of Bloomberg News; by Martin Crutsinger and Paul Wiseman of The Associated Press; and by Ana Swanson of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/20/2018