(Bloomberg) -- China and the U.S. have reached agreement in the sectors of agriculture, autos, and energy, and China will immediately start implementing that consensus, a government spokesman said.
"China will start from agricultural products, autos and energy to immediately implement specific items that China and the U.S. have agreed upon," Ministry of Commerce Spokesman Gao Feng told reporters in Beijing. "In the next 90 days we will work in accordance with the clear timetable and road map to negotiate in areas where both sides have an interest and there are mutual benefits, such as intellectual property rights protection, technology cooperation, market access, and the trade balance."
The comments provide some detail on how the talks are progressing, five days after the two nations’ leaders met in Argentina to try and calm tensions and broker a deal.
There’s no official, confirmed statement of what China agreed as part of the deal, although U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that China had already agreed to lower tariffs on American cars, and Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that China was preparing to restart imports of U.S. soybeans and LNG.
When asked for details on car tariffs, Gao repeated the above statement and suggested watching for an announcement from the State Council’s tariff committee. He also declined to comment on the detention of Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer on Thursday in Canada over potential violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran.
China and the U.S. will work on intellectual property rights protection, technology cooperation, market access issues and the trade balance in the next 90 days, Gao said, adding that China’s goal is to remove all new tariffs within that period.
China is fully confident that it can reach a trade deal with the U.S. within the 90 days set for talks, Gao said. The Chinese and American trade teams have good communication and have already reached a high level of consensus, he added.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Miao Han in Beijing at mhan22@bloomberg.net;Yinan Zhao in Beijing at yzhao300@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, James Mayger
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