US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross rules out ‘definitive’ trade deal at Xi-Trump G20 parley
- ‘The trade deal is going to be thousands of pages,’ he tells a US business news channel
- ‘The G20 is not a place where anyone makes a definitive deal,’ Ross says
Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will not strike a “definitive deal” to end the trade war between the US and China at an anticipated meeting late this month during the G20 summit in Japan, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday.
The face-to-face conference between the leaders, yet to be officially confirmed, would at most result in “some sort of agreement on a path forward”, Ross said in an interview televised by business outlet CNBC.
A meeting between Trump and Xi on December 1, after the G20 meetings in Argentina, resulted in a trade war ceasefire, though that truce has crumbled since talks broke down in early May and both sides returned to imposing tariffs.
“The G20 is not a place where anyone makes a definitive deal,” Ross said during the interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “The trade deal is going to be thousands of pages.”
Trump raised the stakes of the potential face-to-face discussion on Monday when he told CNBC that he would impose 25 per cent tariffs on the remaining US$300 billion of currently untaxed Chinese imports if Xi declines to meet.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said over the weekend that Trump would be “perfectly happy” to impose those duties should the expected meeting on the sidelines of the G20, set for Osaka on June 28 and 29, fail to show progress.
