Donald Trump says he might let March 1 deadline for new China tariffs ‘slide’ if trade war deal is near

• Trump says the US has a big team in China trying to reach a trade agreement and Beijing very much wants to make a deal
• ‘I could see myself letting that slide,’ he said of the deadline to raise US tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 per cent

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 13 February, 2019, 1:40am

UPDATED : Wednesday, 13 February, 2019, 4:35pm

US President Donald Trump will consider pushing back a March 1 deadline for trade negotiations with China if both sides are close to making a deal.

US China Trade War

At a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday, he said he could see himself “letting that slide for a little while”, referring to the looming deadline, at which point US tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese imports are scheduled to increase from 10 to 25 per cent.

“But generally speaking, I’m not inclined to do that,” he added.

A deadline extension would likely rattle hardliners within the administration. In December after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said March 1 was a “hard deadline”.

Trump’s comments came as Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin landed in Beijing ahead of two days of high-level talks later this week.

Asked on Wednesday about his hopes for the trip, Mnuchin said he sought “productive meetings” with the Chinese side.

A lower-level delegation, led by deputy trade representative Jeffrey Gerrish, has been holding preparatory talks in the Chinese capital since Monday.

“We have a big team over in China right now, and they’re working very hard, dealing with the Chinese,” said Trump, adding his frequently repeated assertion that China “wants to make a deal very badly”.

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Trump has said several times that any final deal will be brokered between himself and Xi in person, with White House adviser Kellyanne Conway telling Fox News on Monday that the US president wanted to meet his Chinese counterpart “very soon”.

But Trump, who said last week that it was unlikely he would meet Xi before March 1, appeared to pour more cold water on the prospect of an imminent face-to-face meeting when he said on Tuesday that there was no plan “as of this moment” to meet with Xi at the end of March.

“At some point, I expect to meet with President Xi, who I have a lot of respect for and like a lot, and make the parts of the deal that the group is unable to make,” he said.