White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says there's “hope” that President Trump and Chinese President Xi will meet soon to finalize an agreement.
The veteran financial guru and former Ronald Reagan adviser told Fox News that U.S. officials are optimistic a trade deal will be forged soon.
“I don't want to go into a timeline. There is hope that perhaps by the end of this month or early April, the two leaders will get together and finalize an agreement," said Kudlow, who served as the Trump campaign's senior economic adviser.
"Don't hold me to that because it's not written in cement yet but we must hear back from them. The documents are very clear, we have to get signoff from the Chinese politicians,” said Kudlow, who worked as Reagan’s budget deputy between 1981 and 1985.
“The meetings two weeks ago went better than we thought, the documents that we put together with China's top guy went further and deeper than we thought possible, that includes all the issues, the intellectual property theft issues, the ownership issues, commodities, perhaps most importantly from the standpoint of investor Bob Lighthizer who has done such a great job, enforcement issues," said Kudlow.
“A multilayer enforcement process that at least for now says if China doesn't live up to its agreement, we have the right not only to keep tariffs but to raise tariffs and they will not retaliate. That is breakthrough stuff,” said Kudlow, the head of the National Economic Council that advises President Donald Trump.
Kudlow also touted the strength of the U.S. economy, saying it has fared far better than China's in the tariff spat.
"I think China has been hurt more than we have. The stock market crashed for a while, our stock market went down, had its correction, came back on better news. There's a lot of good economic data out there, China or no China,"
“Wages are rising, it's the best blue-collar manufacturing story since Ronald Reagan -- these are terrific things. The rollback of red tape and deregulation, the trade reforms, the energy dominance is creating exactly the kind of 3% plus growth we anticipated.
Meanwhile, Trump has touted the economy as one of the biggest achievements of his term and declared last July that his administration had “accomplished an economic turnaround of historic proportions.”
On the campaign trail, Trump boasted that he could boost annual economic growth to 4 percent, a goal that analysts always said was unachievable, Reuters explained.
“We are moving back to a sustainable growth pace that we experienced during most of the Obama years,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. “With the tax cut impacts largely done with, it is hard to see how growth can accelerate sharply,” said Naroff, also a Newsmax Finance Insider.
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