China offers 6-year import boost in trade talks with US: Sources
- China offered U.S. trade negotiators a six-year boost in imports, officials familiar with the matter tell CNBC.
- China pegged its proposal to buy more U.S. goods through 2024 to President Donald Trump's hopes of being re-elected to a second term in 2020, the sources told CNBC.
- Chinese officials made the offer during negotiations in Beijing earlier in January, Bloomberg News reported.
China has offered a six-year boost in imports during its ongoing talks with the U.S., officials familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Chinese officials made the offer during negotiations in Beijing earlier in January, Bloomberg News reported. China would increase its annual import of U.S. goods by a combined value of over $1 trillion, the officials told Bloomberg, which was first to report on the import boost offer.
China pegged its proposal to buy more U.S. goods through 2024 to President Donald Trump's hopes of being re-elected in 2020, the sources told CNBC.
The U.S. had a trade deficit of $323 billion with China in 2018. This deal would aim to reduce that annual trade difference to $0 by 2024, one of the officials told Bloomberg.
Stocks rose to their highs of the day when news of the offer hit Wall Street.
The China Trade Index is an equally weighted index of 25 companies created by CNBC, with research by CNBC market analysts.
On Thursday the market jumped on a Wall Street Journal report that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had presented the idea of lowering U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. However, a Treasury Department spokesperson working with the U.S. trade negotiations teams told CNBC that "neither Secretary Mnuchin nor Ambassador Lighthizer have made any recommendations to anyone with respect to tariffs or other parts of the negotiation with China."
China's top trade negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He, will visit Washington, D.C., on Jan. 30 for two days of talks with U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer.
The U.S. has tariffs placed on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and has threatened to add more. As talks continue, Trump postponed raising a 10 percent tariff to 25 percent on $200 billion of goods, which was set to go into effect this month.