Latest US-China Trade Talks Focus on China’s Pledge to Buy More US Goods – USTR

"The talks … focused on China’s pledge to purchase a substantial amount of agricultural, energy, manufactured goods, and other products and services from the United States," the USTR said in its statement.

The USTR gave few other details of the talks, which started on Monday and were initially scheduled to last two days. Media reports, citing US officials, have said that the talks were still underway on Wednesday. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that the talks "are going very well."

READ MORE: Trump Says Trade Talks With China 'Going Very Well'

In its statement on Wednesday, USTAR noted that the US delegation led by Deputy US Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish discussed with their Chinese counterparts ways to achieve fairness, reciprocity, and balance in trade relations between the two countries.

US officials also conveyed Trump’s commitment to address his country’s trade deficit with China and to resolve structural issues to improve trade between both countries, according to the USTR.

The statement came after, in December, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentia to call a truce in their escalating trade war. Xi promised to fix the trade imbalance issue with the United States by starting to purchase US agricultural products. Trump agreed to suspend plans to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10 percent to 25 percent while the countries attempt to negotiate a compromise on several issues during the trade talks.

Washington and Beijing have been locked in a trade war since Trump announced in June a 25 percent tax on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, in a bid to fix the US-Chinese trade deficit. Since then, the two countries have exchanged several rounds of trade tariffs, levying duties of hundreds of billions of dollars.