USA and China negotiating trade peace

The U.S. and Chinese officials are drawing up six memorandums of understanding on structural issues: forced technology transfer and cyber theft, intellectual property rights, services, currency, agriculture, and non-tariff barriers to trade, according to two sources familiar with the progress of the talks, Reuters informs.

The parties also were looking at a 10-item list of ways that China could reduce its trade surplus with the United States, including by buying agricultural produce, energy and goods such as semiconductors, according to two other sources familiar with the talks.

At meetings between U.S. and Chinese officials last week in Beijing the two sides traded texts and worked on outlining obligations on paper, according to one of the sources.

The parties are to come to the agreement before March 1st. This will mark the end of a 90-day truce between the Presidents of the United States and China.

“It can be said that we are now in the sprint phase, and both negotiating teams are working towards the goal of reaching an agreement within the deadline, but some problems are still quite complicated to resolve,” said one Chinese official familiar with the situation.

Otherwise, U.S. tariffs on USD 200 billion worth of Chinese goods may rise from 10 percent to 25 percent.

The Chinese authorities are offering Washington to increase imports of agricultural products from the United States by USD 30 billion a year as part of a trade agreement.