Politics

US Resumes Trade Talks With China Wednesday

The stakes for the meetings are pretty high, since the end of the 90-day trade truce between the two countries is closing in.

US Resumes Trade Talks With China Wednesday
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U.S. and Chinese officials are meeting Wednesday in Washington, D.C. to resume high-level trade talks.

The stakes for the meetings are pretty high, since the end of the 90-day trade truce that President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to back in December is closing in.

China and the U.S. have slapped tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other's goods since the dispute started. And President Trump has threatened to up the ante and increase those tariffs if negotiators can't come to an agreement by March 1.

But Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said just last week that the two countries are "miles and miles from getting a resolution." 

He'd been referring to a vast array of issues that officials need to work out — like intellectual property issues and trade balance. But since the U.S. and China last came together to talk trade, another complication has possibly been added to the pile: the criminal charges against Chinese tech giant Huawei.

The first set of formal charges the Justice Department filed against Huawei on Monday allege the company tried to steal trade secrets from T-Mobile; the other alleges it bypassed U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Huawei's denied any wrongdoing and an official from China's ministry of industry and information technology called the charges "unfair and immoral."

Additional reporting from Newsy affiliate CNN.