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Trade deficit reduction is the U.S. target heading into Trump-Xi talks, Greer says

9/4/2026

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.