China and the United States on Saturday reached consensus on economic and trade issues and agreed to avoid escalation of trade restrictive measures.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, held a meeting in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, on Saturday evening.
After the meeting, officials in charge of the Chinese economic team told Xinhua that the two sides held discussions on China-US economic and trade issues and reached consensus.
The two heads of state spoke highly of positive and effective consultations held recently by the economic and trade teams of both sides.
The two sides recognized that their healthy and stable economic and trade relations conform to common interests of the two countries and the whole world.
The two sides decided to avoid escalation of trade restrictive measures, without further raising existing tariffs imposed on each other and slapping new additional tariffs on other products.
The two sides agreed to take immediate efforts to address issues of mutual concern based on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.
As required by the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Beijing is committed to deepening reform and furthering opening-up. In the process, some economic and trade issues that are of Washington’s concern will be solved. Meanwhile, the US side will actively address China’s concerns on economic and trade issues.
Xi and Trump have instructed the economic and trade teams of both sides to intensify consultation to reach an agreement, so as to lift the additional tariffs imposed this year and bring the bilateral economic and trade relations back to a normal track as soon as possible with a win-win outcome.
Meanwhile, The White House said in a statement that if agreement on trade issues including technology transfer, intellectual property, non-tariff barriers, cyber theft and agriculture has not been reached with China in 90 days that both parties agree that the 10 percent tariffs will be raised to 25 percent.
Trump slapped 10 percent tariffs on $200bn in Chinese goods in September. China responded by imposing its own round of tariffs. Trump has also threatened to add tariffs on another $267bn of Chinese imports.
