WASHINGTON: US negotiators will visit China early next week for trade negotiations, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday, saying he was hopeful progress could be made toward a deal.
Mnuchin told CNBC he and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will depart for China on Monday and hold talks with their Chinese counterparts on Tuesday and Wednesday in Shanghai, followed up by more talks in Washington later.
“There’ll be a few more meetings before we get a deal done,” he later told reporters at the White House. I wouldn’t expect that we’ll resolve all the issues. But the fact that we’re back at the table at the direction of the two presidents is important.”
Mnuchin added that the United States still has a long list of big items to tackle as talks resume after being sidelined in May: “We have a lot of issues.”
He told CNBC that Shanghai held significance for the Chinese. “I take that as good news that we’ll be making progress next week,” he said in the television network’s interview “Hopefully we’ll continue to progress.”
The United States and China are resuming negotiations as the world’s two largest economies amid an ongoing trade war that has rattled global markets.
