Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the G-20 summit in Japan this week during which he would meet his US counterpart Donald Trump for key talks to clinch a deal to end the bruising trade war and to forestall moves by Washington to clamp tariffs on the remaining USD 300 billion of exports from China.
Xi will attend the 14th Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Osaka, Japan from June 27 to 29, at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a brief announcement here on Sunday.
Ahead of their planned meeting, Trump and Xi held a detailed telephone talk on June 18 preparing ground to resolve differences impeding the deal to end the year long trade war between the world's two largest economies.
Trump, who kicked off the trade war last year, is demanding China to reduce the massive trade deficit which climbed to over USD 539 billion last year. He is also insisting on China to workout verifiable measures for protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), technology transfer and more access to American goods to Chinese markets.
Both the countries have imposed additional tariffs on billions of dollars worth of their exports to each other. Trump last week threatened to "immediately" jack up tariffs on the remaining USD 300 billion Chinese exports to US should President Xi fail to show up at the meeting. The US already has 25 per cent duties on more than USD 250 billion of imports from China. Special teams from both the sides headed by high level officials held 11 rounds of talks to end the tariff war.
The talks reportedly broke down after Trump's insistence of verifiable measures to ensure Chinese action to halt IPR violations as well as technology transfer, which Beijing says impedes its sovereignty. After his phone talks with Xi, Trump sounded upbeat about the likely progress in his meeting with Xi at Osaka.
