Sino-US Trade Talks to Be Held in China Next Week - Beijing

02:19 GMT, 4 January 2019

BEIJING (Sputnik) - The statement followed media reports that suggested that the talks would be held during the second week of January in Beijing. The reports also said that the US team would be headed by Deputy US Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish and would include Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs David Malpass.

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"In the early hours of Friday, China and the United States held telephone talks on the level of deputy ministers, during which they confirmed that the US delegation will arrive in China on January 7-8," the ministry said in a statement.

The Commerce Ministry confirmed that Gerrish would lead the US delegation at the talks. "The US and Chinese working groups [on trade and economic issues] will hold constructive talks on the implementation of important agreements, reached by the leaders of the two countries during their Argentina meeting," the ministry said.

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China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war since Trump announced in June that $50 billion worth of Chinese goods would be subject to 25 percent tariffs in a bid to fix the US-Chinese trade deficit. Since then, the two countries have exchanged several rounds of trade tariffs, levying duties on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods.

In early December, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a truce in their escalating trade war after meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, but the two countries have yet to reach a final agreement in their dispute.

Donald Trump said Thursday that USTreasury Department has gained billions of dollars from tariffs on Chinese imports, duties that he said were necessary due to Beijing's unfair trade practices. Trump argued that his tariff policies were inevitable, saying that "at some point this had to be done" to confront China and other countries that implement unfair trade practices.