Trade talks between the United States and China are set to resume on October 10, 2019, when Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, China’s top trade negotiator, returns to Washington. It is expected that Vice Premier Liu will continue the talks with United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The October meetings will be the thirteenth round of talks between the two nations, all of which have been designed to resolve the trade tensions between the two nations.

Vice Premier Liu has announced that he intends to limit the talks to certain areas of trade, such as the trade balance between China and the United States, market entry issues for both countries, and investor protections in China, which means that he intends to keep the discussions away from several challenging structural reform issues. According to Vice Premier Liu, the need for the two countries to reach an agreement on trade favors the goal of striking a deal in a more limited number of areas. “The whole world is expecting to see progress in China-US negotiations,” said Liu, according to the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua News.

While a limited deal between China and the United States is possible, President Trump has expressed a preference for a full agreement. “If we’re going to do the deal, let’s get it done,” he told reporters on September 12, 2019. “A lot of people are talking about it, I see a lot of analysts are saying an interim deal — meaning we’ll do pieces of it, the easy ones first. But there’s no easy or hard. There’s a deal or there’s not a deal. But it’s something we would consider, I guess.”

There is, however, a tough road ahead for a comprehensive agreement, which was underscored by President Trump’s recent speech to the United Nations. As noted above, President Trump said that he, “will not accept a bad deal {with China} for the American people.” In the speech, he also accused Chinese companies of stealing American technology and warned the Chinese government that the United States was closely monitoring the on-going tensions in Hong Kong.