Two days of US-China trade discussions ended in Beijing on Friday with an agreement to keep on talking, and little else. China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday afternoon that both sides reached a consensus on some trade issues, without providing details. They also acknowledged major disagreements on some matters and that they would continue communicating. The US delegation, led by treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, asked China to decrease the trade deficit by at least $200bn by the end of 2020 compared with 2018, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News. By early afternoon on Friday neither side had flagged plans to give a briefing on the discussions, and the US team was scheduled to depart on Friday evening. Earlier, Mnuchin said that the US and China had been having a "very good conversation", without elaborating. While China hasn’t indicated any detail on what it may be prepared to agree to, a senior official sounded a defiant tone ahead of the meeting, and the...
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