US President Donald Trump said Thursday that he expects an agreement "over the next three to four weeks" that would end the escalating trade war with China, Business Insider reports.
"I believe we're going to have a deal with China," said Trump during an executive order signing session in the Oval Office alongside Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. "I think we have plenty of time."
There was no immediate confirmation from Beijing on whether a deal is likely to happen. And Trump dodged questions on whether China's leader, Xi Jinping, made the overture to end the tariffs battle.
This is the first time since Trump increased tariffs on China — up to 245% — that the possibility of a deal has appeared on the horizon.
"It's a game between China and the US in terms of who's going to blink first," Nick Vyas, the founding director of USC Marshall's Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute, told Business Insider before Trump's Thursday remarks. "China feels that they have all the cards to continue to hold out, and President Trump feels that he has power, because we consume more from China than China consumes from us."
"Both of these cases are true, and one has to just wait and watch and see which reality will end up shaping up in the end," he added.
