President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday agreed to restart trade negotiations. The agreement came about during a talk at the G20 Summit in Japan. Trump agreed to put a hold on new tariffs placed on Chinese imports but all current tariffs that are in effect will remain, the Japanese Times reported.
Trump said he's planning to continue trade talks and “we’re going to work with China where we left off.”
“We’ve had an excellent relationship … but we want to do something that will even it up with respect to trade,” Trump told Xi at the meeting. “I actually think that we were very close and then something happened where we slipped a little bit, and now we’re getting a little bit closer. But it would be historic if we could do a fair trade deal. We're totally open to it.”
President Trump on China: "We want to do something that will even it up with respect to trade. I think it's something that's actually very easy to do. I actually think that we were very close, and then we, something happened where it slipped a little bit." #G20 pic.twitter.com/D8uixmtwHz
— The Hill (@thehill) June 29, 2019
Trump then moved to allow Huawei Technologies Co. to buy products from U.S. suppliers.
“U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei,” Trump said at a news conference following the summit. “We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it.”
From the Japanese Times:
The Commerce Department last month moved to blacklist Huawei, cutting it off from U.S. suppliers, though many companies have managed to skirt the restrictions.
The U.S. has been engaged in a global campaign to block Huawei from so-called 5G communications networks, calling the company a security threat. The Trump administration has alleged the Chinese government could use Huawei’s products to spy on countries that use them in their networks.
The company has denied that it conducts espionage for Beijing.
The apparent truce marks a pattern for talks between Trump and Xi, who have professed their friendship with each other and hit the pause button on protectionist measures after previous conversations, only to see negotiations later break down over the contentious details.
Following the agreement, Trump told reporters the meeting with China went well.
“We discussed a lot of things, and we’re right back on track,” Trump told reporters. “We had a very, very good meeting with China. I would say probably even better than expected, and the negotiations are continuing.”