Trump, Xi meeting in November getting on track

President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are looking more likely to meet late next month at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires to discuss their escalating trade dispute, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The White House told Beijing that it wants to move forward with a face-to-face meeting at the international gathering in hopes of determining how to solve their long-standing trade differences, the WSJ wrote.

{mosads}Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow are taking the lead on coordinating the meeting between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies.

But earlier in the day on Thursday Kudlow sounded less certain that a meeting would happen.

He told CNBC that “there is a lot of discussion about it” and there was some movement toward working a chat into the schedule.

“But it has not been set in concrete as far as I know, nor has the agenda been set in concrete,” he said. “They have lots to talk about. So we’ll see.”

Kudlow said the Chinese response so far to U.S. demands that Beijing make sweeping changes to their economy have so far been “unsatisfactory.”

“Our asks are pretty common sense and Europe shares our view, and Japan shares our view, and Canada shares our view. So, we’ll see how it plays out,” he said during the CNBC interview.

“I think the Chinese have got to come and say, ‘Okay, we’re going to change our structure, we’re going to abide by the laws and we’re going to make a fair trade deal that will help the American economy and the American workforce,’” he said.

“They’ve got to do that. They have not done that yet.”

The the U.S. and China met in August in an effort to make constructive progress on major issues such as intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer that American businesses have complained about for years.

But billions in tit-for-tat tariffs have chilled U.S.-Chinese relations and brought the discussions to a dead stop. 

Last month, the Chinese balked at another meeting after Trump hit U.S. imports from China with a new 10 percent tariff on $200 billion in goods. Beijing retaliated with $60 billion in the latest salvo.

Trump said he would raise those tariffs to 25 percent without a U.S.-China deal.

During the summer, the U.S. and China had exchanged about $50 billion in tariffs on each other’s goods.

Trump has threatened another $257 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which would cover all U.S. imports from China.

The White House has argued that the tariffs are being used as leverage to force China to make changes to its economy.

U.S. businesses have urged the Trump administration to quickly pursue a solution to relieve them and consumers from the pressures of higher costs.

Trump further ramped up tensions recently by accusing Beijing of meddling in this year’s mid-term elections.

Beijing has denied the allegations.