(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aries to discuss the ongoing trade dispute between the two countries, Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday.
Kudlow told reporters that U.S. “asks are on the table” and that the two leaders “will meet for a bit” in Argentina. He also said he anticipated staff-level meetings between Chinese and American officials ahead of the leaders’ summit.
But Kudlow also cautioned he did not expect a major breakthrough between the two leaders, while saying that a broad agreement “on some basic principles and trading rules” --including intellectual property theft, forced transfer of technology, and tariffs on agricultural products -- “would be most welcome.”
Trade talks between the two nations have been stalled since late September, when the two countries imposed another round of tariffs on each other’s imports. Kudlow accused China of refusing to engage on trade issues in a Financial Times interview published on Sunday.
The benchmark Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index fell last week to its lowest level in four years as trade tensions and concerns about an economic slowdown weighed on sentiment. Growth decelerated to 6.5 percent in the third quarter, according to data published Oct. 19 by the National Bureau of Statistics.