China and the United States have reached an initial agreement on trade.
Both parties said in a joint statement on Saturday that China has agreed to “significantly increase” purchases of US goods and services, in order to reduce the trade imbalance between the two countries. This was a top demand of the Trump administration during two days of trade talks in Washington with Chinese officials.
Both sides specifically agreed to “meaningful increases” in US agriculture and energy exports, according to the statement. The US intends to send a team to China to hammer out the details.
US officials on Thursday told CNN that Beijing had proposed boosting Chinese purchases of American goods by around $200 billion. But at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang denied such an offer had been made.
The statement also did not mention ZTE, the Chinese tech giant that has recently been at the center of the trade spat.
Scott Kennedy, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the joint statement is “too vague to be binding on its own.”
There are no details on intellectual property.
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