US Treasury Sec. Mnuchin warns China to avoid soft commitments in trade talks - FT

In a telephone interview with the Financial Times (FT), Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury Secretary, warned China to avoid “soft commitments” in a new round of trade talks that will take place once the 90-days trade ceasefire comes to an end.

According to the Trump-Xi trade truce agreement reached on Saturday, the US President Trump agreed to not ratchet up tariffs on $200bn of Chinese imports from 10% to 25% on January 1.

Mnuchin noted: “There’s a 100 per cent unanimous view on our economic team that this needs to be a real agreement. These can’t be soft commitments from China. There need to be specific dates, specific action items.”

Additional Comments:

“Xi laid out in great detail what they were willing to do.” 

“This was the first time that the Chinese came back with a long, specific response to both the structural issues and the non-structural issues. The president made a decision on how to proceed.”