A report published in the South China Morning Post stated that Washington had invited Chinese Vice Premier Liu He to visit the United States next week to sign the US-China Phase 1 trade deal.
Now, White House trade official Peter Navarro mentioned the report on Fox News, and said that the deal would be signed “within the next week or so” pending a translation of the final text.
The SCMP had cited an anonymous source briefed on the matter as saying that “Washington has sent an invitation and Beijing has accepted it,” adding that the Chinese delegation would stay a few days in the US starting from Saturday and extending onto the middle of next week.
However, Navarro said “never believe reports on anonymous sources” and advised viewers to wait until President Trump or US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer confirmed the news.
Neither the US nor China have formally confirmed the date for a possible deal-signing, though Trump had announced the “historic” agreement on December 13.
Under phase one of the trade deal, China would have to undergo structural reforms and changes to its trade regimes in areas of intellectual property, technology transfer, agriculture, financial services, and currency and foreign exchange. It would also have to make a commitment to make substantial additional purchases of US goods and services in the coming years including at least $40 billion of US agricultural goods. In addition, the agreement would establish a dispute resolution system.
Phase 1 would not result in tariffs disappearing, however. Rather, the US agreed not to introduce new and higher tariffs on approximately $156 billion of Chines goods that were scheduled to take place just days after the deal was struck. The existing tariffs of 15 per cent on $120 billion worth of Chinese goods was cut to 7.5 per cent. The US would still maintain 25 per cent tariffs on approximately $250 billion of Chinese imports.