Trump-Xi summit pushed back to at least April

The trade talks between United States (US) president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping have been postponed to at least April, later than the expected March meeting, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources.

Mr Trump had said on Wednesday he was in no rush to complete a deal. On Thursday, the US president provided an update to state that talks are ‘moving along very well’.

‘We’ll have news on China -- probably one way or the other we’re going to know over the next three to four weeks,’ he had said.

A discussion was held between China’s vice premier Liu He and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin by phone on Thursday, and that “further material progress” has been made over the wording of the agreement document, Xinhua news reported.

Mr Mnuchin told a congressional committee the deal is expected to be finalized soon, but because the trade deal is a hefty 150-pages long, the progress is complex. ‘We want to get the agreement right…that’s more important than the exact timing,’ he said.

Mr Trump and Mr Xi were previously expected to hold a summit at the US president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida this month, but no concrete plans have been made in more than two weeks.

China has not made any public statements on the next meeting between the Chinese president and Mr Trump so far.

Last month, Mr Trump decided not to increase higher tariffs on Chinese goods as scheduled on March 1 to provide more time for negotiations between the two countries.