{"id":32272,"date":"2019-02-08T02:23:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T02:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32272"},"modified":"2019-02-08T02:23:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T02:23:12","slug":"trump-says-he-wont-meet-chinas-xi-before-march-1-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32272","title":{"rendered":"Trump says he won’t meet China’s Xi before March 1 deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

There are no plans yet for US President Donald Trump<\/a> and Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a> to meet soon in hope of finalising a trade deal, Trump said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Asked by a reporter whether there would be a meeting before a March 1 deadline for the two countries to reach a trade deal, Trump said: “No.”<\/p>\n

When asked whether there would be a meeting in the next month or so, Trump said: “Not yet. Maybe.”<\/p>\n

The remarks confirmed comments from administration officials who said the two men were unlikely to meet before the deadline, dampening hopes of a quick trade pact and sparking a drop in US stock markets.<\/p>\n

Trump has said previously he would need to meet with Xi to seal a final deal.<\/p>\n

The countries had taken a 90-day hiatus in their trade war to hammer out a deal, and another round of talks is scheduled for next week in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Thursday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow indicated that it was unlikely that the two leaders would meet before the deadline, but they could still hold talks later.<\/p>\n

“At some point, the two presidents will meet, that is what Mr Trump has been saying. But that is off in the distance still, at the moment,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n

Secretary Steven Mnuchin added that “there’s nothing planned at this time for [a meeting], but the president has talked about potentially meeting with President Xi and we’ll see what progress we make next week”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are scheduled to travel to China next week to continue for the third round of trade negotiations.<\/p>\n

Kudlow told Fox Business that there was still a “sizable distance” separating the two sides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sharp selloff in US stocks<\/h2>\n

The news that the two leaders were now unlikely to meet spurred a sharp selloff in US stocks, dashing the optimism that had been building that the countries were progressing towards a deal before tariffs on Chinese imports rise to 25 percent after the March 1 deadline.<\/p>\n

The S&P 500 Index tumbled to its low of the day, down 1.6 percent in its biggest drop in more than a month. Treasury bond yields dropped as investors sought safety in sovereign US debt. The benchmark 10-year yield slid four basis points to 2.66 percent, the lowest in nearly a week.<\/p>\n

“I could see where that would impact the markets because, obviously, we had a lift in the month of January from optimism surrounding these trade talks,” said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois. “It does make sense the market is pulling back somewhat on that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, Chinese and US negotiators said they made “important progress”, China’s state media reported following the conclusion of two days of high-level talks in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the White House during a meeting last Thursday with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, Trump said he was optimistic that the economic powerhouses could reach “the biggest deal ever made”.<\/p>\n

Despite the optimism, the White House emphasised in a statement that a scheduled tariff increase on $200bn of Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent was a “hard deadline” if no deal was reached by March 1.<\/p>\n

Trump said last week he did not think he would need to extend the March 1 deadline, adding that he believes “every point will be agreed to” when he meets Xi.<\/p>\n

Washington complaints about technology transfers and intellectual property protections, along with accusations of Chinese cybertheft of US trade secrets and a systematic campaign to acquire US technology firms, were used by Trump’s administration to justify punitive tariffs on $250bn worth of Chinese imports.<\/p>\n

China has retaliated with tariffs of its own, but has suspended some and is allowing some purchases of US soybeans during the talks.<\/p>\n

Chinese officials have said their policies do not coerce technology transfers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are no plans yet for US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet soon in hope of finalising a trade deal, Trump said on Thursday. Asked by a reporter whether there would be a meeting before a March 1 deadline for the two countries to reach a trade deal, Trump said:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}