'China, US working to remove all tariffs after trade truce'

China and the United States have started working toward removing all the tariffs they have imposed on each other in a trade war, the Chinese Foreign Ministry says, shortly after Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to temporarily suspend the months-long trade war.

The ministry's spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a daily news briefing on Monday that the Chinese and American presidents had instructed their economic teams to work toward removing all tariffs, Reuters reported.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua also reported that the two leaders had “instructed the economic teams of both sides to step up negotiations toward the removal of all additional tariffs and reach a concrete deal that is mutually beneficial and win-win.”

Trump and Xi reached an agreement over dinner on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the Argentinean capital, Buenos Aires, on Saturday, after months of tough negotiations over trade and tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of products.

Following the meeting, which was described as a success by both sides, Trump said he would postpone for 90 days a planned January 1 increase in US tariffs on Chinese goods.

In a Twitter post on Sunday night, the US president said China would "reduce and remove" the 40 percent tariffs it has placed on US cars imported into China, without providing any details.

In China, however, accounts differed. There was no mention in the media of the 90-day period. News sources instead reported an indefinite halt while negotiations over the trade dispute continued.

There was also no reference to new purchases of US goods in Chinese statements, which only said that parties wanted to reach a "concrete deal that is mutually beneficial."

The official China Daily welcomed the new "consensus" in an editorial on Monday, saying the truce gave both sides “breathing space” to resolve their differences. It however argued that there was no “magic wand” that would allow the grievances to disappear immediately.

“Given the complexity of interactions between the two economies, the rest of the world will still be holding its collective breath,” wrote the daily.

According to a director of the CSIS China Power Project in Washington, the difference indicated that there was "a lot of room for misunderstanding."

"I think that there's still enormous uncertainty about what the outcome of these negotiations will be," Bonnie Glaser told CNN on Monday.

A senior official at the energy giant China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) also seemed to be not optimistic about the deal, saying, he expected the Trump administration to "increase tariffs on China after 90 days despite the efforts and goodwill from China."

"Trump's policy has been so unpredictable that Chinese companies are being very cautious on buying US commodities with or without tariffs. The risks are simply too big and companies have became more averse to risks now," Reuters quoted the official as saying anonymously.

A White House press statement also offered different details about the deal. It said China had agreed to purchase "a not yet agreed upon, but very substantial" amount of US agricultural, energy, industrial, and other products in order "to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries."

The trade war has seen the two world powers targeting each other with escalating tariffs since July, when Trump initiated the war with 250 billion dollars in tariffs on Chinese goods. China retaliated with duties of some 110 billion dollars' worth of US goods only later.

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