US, China reached an understanding on trade relationship, Jared Kushner says
The U.S. and China have come to an understanding on the direction of their trade relationship, White House adviser Jared Kushner said on Tuesday, more than 15 months after a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies began.
"We've come to an understanding with China on where we want to head," Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, said on Tuesday, during a panel at Saudi Arabia's Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh.
Kushner's comments come several days after talks between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and China's Vice Premier Liu He, during which the two sides "basically completed" key parts of the text for phase one of the trade deal.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He accompanied by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, left, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, greets the media before minister-level trade meetings at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Wash
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could sign the partial deal in mid-November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Chile “if everything goes smoothly,” according to the South China Morning Post.
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"As the President said several weeks ago, we have reached a phase-one agreement with the Chinese and both sides are working to finalize the text for a signing in Chile,” a White House spokesperson told FOX Business.
Expected to be included in the deal are Chinese concessions on intellectual property, financial services and agriculture. In exchange, the U.S. agreed not to impose another round of tariffs on Chinese goods on Oct. 15. Kushner called it a "fabulous" deal.
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"I think we had a very honest dialogue with China," he said. "They saw that we were serious because a lot of these issues were not US and China Issues. I mean like intellectual property is really China vs. civilization. It's people who want to have a rules-based system or not."
Beijing also vowed to eliminate all restrictions on foreign investments, deputy Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said during a news conference on Tuesday.
The Chinese government pledged to "remove the requirement on total assets" for establishing a foreign-owned bank. "We will move faster to open finance industries," Shouwen said.
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FOX Business' Edward Lawrence and the Associated Press contributed to this report.