US, Chinese officials to meet at Treasury for technical talks on trade, source says

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By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. and Chinese officials will meet on Thursday at the U.S. Treasury for staff-level technical talks on trade and economic issues that will not cover last week’s deal for Chinese short video app TikTok to switch to U.S.-controlled ownership, a source familiar with the discussions said.

The talks also will not cover the next round of high-level trade talks to be held between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of a November 10 expiration of the two countries’ tariff-reducing trade truce, the source said.

Instead, the talks on Thursday will focus on technical details related to trade issues already discussed in previous rounds of talks, said the source, who requested anonymity due to not being authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Bessent and He agreed in Madrid last week on a framework deal to place TikTok’s U.S. operations under American-controlled ownership, and President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday declaring that the TikTok deal meets requirements in a U.S. law that Chinese ownership ends or the app shuts down in the U.S.

The Madrid talks, like previous rounds in Stockholm, London and Geneva, covered a variety of trade issues between the world’s two largest economies, but there has been no reported progress on core irritants.

These include Chinese demands for U.S. tariff reductions, and U.S. complaints about dwindling Chinese purchases of U.S. farm products and China’s growing state-driven excess manufacturing capacity flooding the world with cheap exports.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Daniel Wallis)