Top trade negotiators from China and the United States will hold a phone conversation on Friday, the Chinese commerce ministry has announced, as the countries’ talks remained on track despite plans for their respective presidents to meet in Chile being disrupted.
A spokesman for the ministry said the two countries had maintained close communication and negotiations were going well.
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The announcement came hours after next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit was cancelled by its host nation Chile, catching Chinese officials off guard.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump had been expected to meet on the sidelines of the Apec leaders’ meeting in Santiago, scheduled on November 16 and 17, and sign an interim trade agreement.
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The Xi-Trump meeting was plunged into uncertainty when Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera cancelled the Apec meeting because of the country’s anti-government protests. But Chinese diplomatic observers and government advisers said the Apec cancellation had eased the pressure on negotiators from China and the US to rush to strike a partial trade deal.
The proposed interim agreement was based on talks completed on October 11 between Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He and the US’ Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump said the two sides had reached a “substantial phase-one deal” that may be ratified by himself and Xi at the Apec meeting.
Shi Yinhong, a Chinese state councillor and international relations professor at Renmin University, said the Apec cancellation may give Chinese and US negotiators more time to work out a better deal, adding that the schedule had been tight to wrap up a written agreement, even a partial one.
“The cancellation of Apec is not necessarily a bad thing,” Shi said. “It could be worse if they rushed a premature deal and later fell out again. Even if a partial deal was signed during Apec, there was still a chance that things would deteriorate if the deal was not good enough.”
