Positive message of practical and concrete progress in trade talks

US President Donald Trump hailed the two-day talks between China and the United States as having made "tremendous progress" in the two sides' efforts to find a solution to their trade dispute.

The progress is tremendous not only because the two sides have candidly discussed a series of divisive issues, such as trade, technology transfer, intellectual property protection and agriculture, and reached some agreement, but because, more important, they have demonstrated that specific discussions to find ways to address their differences with some mutual give-and-take can be "fruitful", as the Chinese delegation described the talks.

Since the US initiated the ongoing dispute with China last year, it has imposed high tariffs on Chinese products - prompting tit-for-tat actions - and then repeatedly threatened harsher punishments. But such an unreasonable attitude and lack of respect for China's interests has harmed the US economy as well as China's, and threatened to inflict serious damage on the global supply chains that would take a long time to fix.