Donald Trump’s top trade negotiator said the US and China had settled on a process for enforcing a trade agreement between the countries, clearing a key hurdle in the negotiations to end their trade war.
In testimony to Congress yesterday Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative, said Chinese officials had agreed to regular meetings among senior officials at different levels to discuss US complaints. If there was no satisfactory outcome after that, Washington could proceed with “unilateral” but “proportional” action to punish Beijing.
Mr Lighthizer’s announcement of an apparent entente on enforcement comes amid growing expectations that Mr Trump and Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, are on the verge of an agreement to end the cycle of tit-for-tat tariffs that has cast a cloud over the global economy in the past year.