Liu He's US trip confirmed for Thursday

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will come to Washington on Thursday to continue trade negotiations, the Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday. Liu had previously been scheduled to lead a large delegation for at least three days of discussions aimed at concluding a draft agreement. The two-day trip is shorter than expected after President Donald Trump's announcement that he would increase punitive tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10% to 25%. New tariffs on the remainder of China’s exports to the U.S. would take longer to implement beyond Friday's beginning date for lifting tariffs. Trump’s tweets were prompted by a downbeat assessment of the state of the talks delivered at the weekend by U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer. On Monday, he suggested that businesses should have factored in the possibility of failure of the talks, saying they had been put “on notice that this was something that could very well happen”. He also said there would be a process to exempt some companies from the levies. China is putting together its own list of goods that it will hit with additional tariffs if the U.S. follows through on its threat to hike tariffs on Chinese goods as of Friday. Bloomberg is reporting that the tariffs by China would become effective one minute after the U.S. in the event that the U.S. ups tariffs to 25% on $200 billion in Chinese goods. However, Chinese government agencies did not confirm the potential action. The U.S. would reconsider imposing higher tariffs on China if the negotiations got “back on track,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He added that negotiators had been optimistic in the past about the prospects for a deal and had been planning for a summit meeting between Trump and President Xi Jinping of China to finalize the deal. But Mnuchin said it became “particularly clear over the weekend” that the Chinese had moved negotiations “substantially backwards.”