China and US teams race to find easy summit deliverables at meeting in Seoul

The two teams, led by Vice-Premier He Lifeng and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, will meet in Seoul for one day, a departure from previous rounds that stretched over two days across European cities and in Kuala Lumpur.

“Trump will absolutely want to announce the agreement in Beijing. The Seoul round will probably serve to iron out any last-minute issues,” said Carlos Casanova, senior Asia economist at Swiss private bank UBP.

Both sides were more likely to focus on confirming deliverables rather than engaging in deep negotiations, he said.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at French investment bank Natixis, said subjects on the table would include China’s purchase of US agricultural products and Boeing aircraft as well as a deal between Ford and China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL), the world’s largest manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. The technology industry in the United States is pressuring Washington for access to the innovations of Chinese cleantech companies to ease the energy bottleneck brought about by the rapid growth of power-hungry artificial intelligence data centres.

“This has to be something that flies with Trump as a winning point … Trump needs to sell the job aspect of [green energy],” she said.