
But to some experts, the real issue is China’s growing influence on the global stage, which they say the U.S. wants to curb.
“We can’t expect a deal of breakthrough that fundamentally solves the issues between the United States and China because they’re too profound, they’re too deep, there are too many of them,” said Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“It’s not simply trade friction because the countries are involved in a global competition for pre-eminence which includes trade regime, security architectures, norms and practices, values and ideologies and there’s really nothing that Xi Jinping can put on the table that will satisfy Trump’s demand for structural change within China,” Daly told CNBC’s Sri Jegarajah on Thursday.