"While progress has been made, much work remains to be done," the statement said on Thursday. "Trump has reiterated that the 90-day process agreed to in Buenos Aires represents a hard deadline, and that United States tariffs will increase unless the United States and China reach a satisfactory outcome by March 1, 2019", the White House said Thursday.
US President Donald Trump noted Thursday that the United States and China could reach a trade deal by the March deadline. However, Trump hinted at a big, comprehensive trade deal or else he would postpone any agreement.
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China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war since Trump announced last 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 of goods.
Under a previous bilateral agreement reached in May 2018, Beijing pledged to buy more US goods and address US concerns over China’s alleged unfair trade practices. But that trade deal fell apart shortly afterward and failed to prevent Trump from escalating trade tensions by slapping steep tariffs on Chinese goods since last July.
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According to the US-based media and the US government reports, Tariffs imposed earlier on aluminum, steel and a number of other exports have already hit the Chinese economy, where growth has fallen to 6.4 percent after years of double digit economic expansion.
READ MORE: Trump Says Trade Talks With China 'Going Very Well'