Agriculture will be one of the core subjects when U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin travel to China next week to resume trade talks, according to a White House statement released Wednesday.
The first in-person meeting between high-level negotiators since Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit last month will resume on Tuesday in Shanghai, an advancement on the telephone negotiations that have been taking place for the past two weeks.
“The discussions will cover a range of issues, including intellectual property, forced technology transfer, non-tariff barriers, agriculture, services, the trade deficit, and enforcement,” the White House said.
China’s restrictions on U.S. ag commodities remain a major point of friction between negotiators, according to U.S. government and industry officials. The U.S. continues to press China to lift onerous restrictions on U.S. beef, remove bans on ractopamine and growth hormones and reform its biotech approval system to expedite new trait approvals.
The U.S.-China talks to resolve their trade war broke down in early May after, according to Lighthizer, China reneged on several major promises. Some of those broken promises included ag policy that China backtracked on, according to statements from U.S. government officials.
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