China and the US ramped up talks on steel amid threats from President Donald Trump to impose new curbs on imports of the metal in the name of US national security.
The intensified deliberations are part of the “Comprehensive Economic Dialogue” between Mr Trump’s team and their Chinese counterparts in Washington which began this week.
The first round of discussions was expected to yield little in terms of concrete announcements. But there were signs the Trump administration’s threat to invoke a cold war-era law and impose either tariffs or quotas on steel imports was leading at least to more substantive discussions on alleged dumping of Chinese steel on world markets.