Reducing the trade deficit is the declared U.S. objective heading into President Trump's meeting with President Xi, United States Trade Representative Greer said. The administration expects further announcements on agriculture to come during Xi's visit. Greer maintained that current trade policies and tariffs are leaving the economy unimpaired.
The deficit as the metric
Greer's framing puts the bilateral trade imbalance at the center of what the Trump-Xi meeting is meant to accomplish. Setting deficit reduction as the explicit aim of a heads-of-state meeting fixes a benchmark: the outcome can be measured against what the administration said it was optimizing for.
The tariff posture supports that goal. Greer contested the economic drag argument directly, asserting that existing trade policies and the tariff structure are not weighing on the economy. The claim contests arguments that tariff costs undercut the regime's own negotiating purpose.
Agriculture and Xi's visit
The administration's agriculture signal is specific to Xi's visit. Greer said further agriculture-related announcements are expected during the bilateral engagement, giving farm trade the most concrete near-term timeline of any category the administration has named.
That pairing, a deficit reduction target alongside an expected agriculture announcement, positions the talks as economic engagement with sector-level deliverables attached. The deficit is the strategic goal. Agricultural output from Xi's visit is the first concrete test of whether the engagement is producing movement.