Digital Trade, Cyber Intrusions to Be Part of US-China Phase 2 Trade Talks - Official

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Varied issues ranging from digital trade to cross border data sharing and cyber intrusions will be addressed by the "phase two" trade agreement negotiations between the United States and China, a senior US administration official said on Friday.
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“There are a number of issues that we could address moving forward. You know, I mentioned the localization of cross border data transfer," the official said. "There are issues related to subsidies and some disciplines that could be likely areas that we would want to address – and cyber intrusions as well."

The official also said issues related to digital trade will be addressed in future negotiations.

The senior US official said that "phase one" of the US-China trade agreement would be signed in the first week of January.

"I think this would be signed the first week of January. That’s what we are targeting," the official said at a briefing.

The official also said that China had agreed to increase its purchases of goods from the US by $200 billion over the next two years under the newly forged partial trade deal between the two countries.

“They have committed to increase their purchases of manufacturing, agriculture goods, energy products and services by at least 200 billion dollars over the course of the next two years,” the official said at the briefing. “In the agricultural area we are looking at China making purchases… each of the next two years about an average of 40 to 50 billion dollars.”

The US and China announced earlier on Friday that they had worked out a "phase one" trade deal. The "phase one" agreement is expected to be signed at the ministerial level between US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.

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