Top US officials to visit China for trade talks next week: White House

United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are set to visit Beijing on March 28 for the latest round of trade talks in order to finalise a deal, the White House said on Saturday.

"At the direction of President Donald J Trump, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin will travel to Beijing, China, for principal-level meetings starting on March 28, 2019, to continue negotiations aimed at improving the trade relationship between the United States and China," an official statement said.

"The United States principals will be accompanied by Deputy United States Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish and other senior officials from the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the Department of the Treasury," it added.

The statement noted that the US looked forward to welcoming a delegation from China led by Vice Premier Liu He for meetings in Washington starting on April 3.

The US had imposed tariffs ranging from 10 to 25 per cent on Chinese imports in a trade dispute which started last year. As a retaliatory move, China imposed duties on US imports amounting to USD 110 billion.

Both Beijing and Washington are engaged in intense negotiations in the wake of a trade dispute, which would have originally seen the United States substantively increase tariffs on Chinese goods from March 1. Trump has since withheld the tariff increase as talks between the two sides have been promising.

Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the last year's G-20 summit in Argentina, where the two countries agreed to temporarily halt the dispute and undertake negotiations to resolve trade issues.

Both USA and China have met for multiple rounds of talks ever since with the US President delaying fresh tariffs on Chinese imports.

Washington and Beijing now hope to reach a final trade deal during the late-April summit at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, according to officials in the Trump administration.