Trump to meet trade officials after their talks with 'very spoiled' China

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in China
(Image credit: Nicolas Asfouri/Getty Images)

President Trump will meet with U.S. officials Saturday following their return from trade negotiations in China. The president tweeted about the debriefing Friday evening, suggesting he is not satisfied with the results of the conference:

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Led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the delegation arrived in China Thursday and reportedly made demands including a $200 billion reduction in China's trade surplus to the U.S. by 2020. Washington also demanded China stop its "Made in China 2025" subsidies for Chinese industry, and asked that there be no retaliatory trade taxes or restrictions for the Trump administration plan to impose new tariffs on Chinese exports.

Beijing, meanwhile, requested an end to an American investigation into Chinese trade and production policies as well as U.S. restrictions on certain technological exports to China.

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"The U.S. is too demanding," an unnamed Chinese trade policy adviser told the South China Morning Post. "The difference is too much. The problems cannot be solved by China over a short-run nor could they be solved merely by China without coordination from the U.S." Both governments characterized the talks as blunt.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.