Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary, said on Sunday that he was “quite optimistic” that remaining sticking points in the first phase of American trade talks with China could be resolved soon, adding that the countries’ leaders still planned to meet later this month.
US president Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were on track to meet in November, Mr Ross said, although the venue was a “work in progress”, following last week’s scrapping of the planned Apec summit in Santiago during Chile’s recent unrest.
“You won’t have a deal on anything until you have a deal on everything,” Mr Ross told the Financial Times in Bangkok, where he is part of a large delegation of US officials attending a summit of Asean, the regional grouping, and associated meetings with Asian and Pacific leaders. “But we are quite optimistic that the remaining issues for the phase one can be closed out.”