Donald Trump appeared to call into question the terms of a trade deal with China on Wednesday, hinting that it may be too difficult to conclude in its current form.
In an early morning tweet, the US president wrote that while negotiations were “moving along nicely . . . in the end we will probably have to use a different structure [for the deal] in that this will be too hard to get done and verify results after completion”.
Washington and Beijing have been edging closer to a deal, with the Trump administration announcing on Sunday that it was putting on hold threatened tariffs on up to $150bn in Chinese imports* and China pledging to increase imports of US agricultural goods.