Trump meets with Chinese Vice-Premier on trade talks

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon met with Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He at the White House over bilateral ties and the ongoing bilateral high-level trade talks.

Liu is in Washington D.C. for the seventh round of high-level economic and trade talks between the world's top two economies that started on Thursday. He is also visiting the United States as the special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Liu first conveyed Xi's message to Trump. The Chinese president said that the China-US trade talks have achieved good progress recently, and received positive responses from both sides as well as the international community.

Xi said he hopes the two sides would maintain the spirit of mutual respect and win-win cooperation, make further efforts and meet each other halfway, so as to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.

As the lead Chinese negotiator, Liu said that over the past two days, economic and trade teams of both countries have had fruitful talks and achieved good progress in such areas as balance of trade, agriculture, technology transfer, protection of intellectual property rights, and financial services.

He said both teams will redouble their efforts and speed up consultations in the next stage, so as to fulfill the great responsibilities placed on their shoulders by the two presidents.

Trump noted that the US-China relationship has been "very good" and that "great progress" is being made in the past two days of talks.

The two sides decided to extend the talks by two days till Sunday.

He said that he believes that the two parties would eventually reach a deal that is both "meaningful" and "good for both countries."

He is looking forward to meeting Xi again in the near future and jointly witness a historic moment in bilateral trade and economic relations.