President Donald Trump expects to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping “probably” in March at Mar-a-Lago, he told reporters at the top of a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He Friday.
Trump met with Liu on the second day of trade meetings at the White House between U.S. and Chinese officials. He told reporters welcomed into the Oval Office at the beginning of his meeting with Liu that it was a “great honor” to meet with Liu, and they were “getting along very well.”
The president said he would soon meet again with Chinese President Xi Jinping, “probably at Mar-A-Lago, probably fairly soon, during the month of March.” The goal of the meeting would involve working out “the finer points” of a trade deal.
The two leaders met on December 1 at the G20 Argentina, where they agreed to a 90-day truce on any tariff increases and more focused trade talks.
Trump and Xi held their first meeting after president Trump’s inauguration in April 2017 at Mar-a-Lago.
“Speaking for the United States, I would say it’s probably more likely that a deal does happen,” Trump said Friday of a trade deal between the U.S. and China.
President Trump and Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin, also present in the Oval Office, conveyed this round of U.S.-China meetings in D.C. has gone so well that the Chinese delegation has extended their trip and will be continuing through the weekend. The two confirmed a “final agreement” on currency and currency manipulation.
“We have a deal on currency and currency manipulation,” the president confirmed.
Trump pointed Friday to ZTE paying a “big fine of $1.2 billion” when a reporter asked about the Chinese technology company. He said they may or may not include ZTE and Huawei in the U.S.-China deal being negotiated. He added they would be discussing the issue of charges against Huawei in the next couple of weeks with U.S. attorneys and Attorney General Barr, “We’ll be making that decision, right now it’s not something that we’re discussing.”
Asked about developments in 5G technology, the president said, “I’d like to have all companies be able to compete. I don’t want to artificially block people out.” He went on, “We want to have great 5G, ultimately that’s going to morph into the 6G and probably 6G will be obsolete in about two months the way it’s going.”
“I want to have competition with China, fair competition,” said Trump. “We’ve always done very well in open competition.”
“We have great cooperation both ways with China,” said Trump. “I think we have a very good chance of making a deal…both parties want to make it a meaningful deal.”
“China has the advantage of having many years of tremendous success at the expense of the United States,” the president added. He blamed America’s “past leaders” for that.
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook
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