BEIJING (Reuters) – The United States and China will continue trade talks in Beijing for an unscheduled third day, a member of the U.S. delegation said on Tuesday, as the world’s two largest economies looked to resolve their bitter trade dispute.
Steven Winberg, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy told reporters at the U.S. delegation’s hotel that talks, which began on Monday, had gone well.
“I confirm we’re continuing tomorrow, yes,” Winberg told reporters, declining to answer further questions.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, which is leading the U.S. negotiating team, also said talks would continue on Wednesday and “a statement will likely follow then.”
The two sides had extended their trade talks late into a second day in Beijing on Tuesday, a source with knowledge of the meetings said, but few other details had emerged.
The meetings this week are the first face-to-face talks since U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed in December to a 90-day truce in a trade war that has roiled global financial markets.
The editor-in-chief of China’s state-run Global Times tabloid, Hu Xijin, said on Twitter earlier that continuing the talks on Wednesday “sends a signal: The two sides are in serious talks and working hard to solve the disagreements between them.”
It was unclear if the full U.S. delegation would join for talks on Wednesday or just select officials from certain agencies.
Trump, in a post on Twitter on Tuesday, reiterated his recent statement that the talks with China were going well but gave no other details.
On Monday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross predicted that Beijing and Washington could reach a trade deal that “we can live with.”
Ross said immediate trade issues would be the easiest to tackle, while enforcement issues and structural reforms, such as intellectual property rights and market access, would be more challenging.
The U.S. team, led by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish, includes under secretaries from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Treasury, and senior officials from those agencies and the White House.
Trump imposed import tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods last year and threatened more to pressure Beijing to change its practices on issues ranging from industrial subsidies to intellectual property and hacking. China has retaliated with tariffs of its own.
Earlier on Tuesday, China approved five genetically modified (GM) crops for import, a move seen as a “goodwill gesture” by some in the U.S. agriculture industry that could boost China’s overseas grains purchases and ease pressure from the United States to open its markets to more farm goods.
The timely approval of GM crops had been an early Trump administration demand in trade talks dating back to 2017.
U.S. farmers and global seed companies have long complained about Beijing’s slow and unpredictable process for approving GM crops for import, stoking trade tensions between the two sides.
Reporting by Michael Martina and Dominique Patton; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and David Lawder in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie, Bernadette Baum and Peter Graff