WASHINGTON — President Trump said the United States and China were moving closer toward a trade agreement and suggested that the fate of Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant facing criminal charges along with its chief financial officer, could be resolved as part of a final trade deal with Beijing.
Ringed by his top advisers and a visiting Chinese delegation on Friday in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said talks would continue through the weekend and that there was a “very, very good chance” of a deal with China being reached. He said he expected to meet personally with President Xi Jinping of China to "work out the final points,” most likely in March at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
The talks have been aimed at resolving the Trump administration’s concerns about China’s trade barriers and its treatment of American companies, including forcing firms to hand over valuable technology as a condition of doing business there. But Mr. Trump again indicated that he might intertwine a national security case with the trade talks, despite concerns from his own law enforcement and intelligence community about doing so.
When asked by a reporter if criminal charges against Huawei — which has been charged by the Justice Department with stealing trade secrets — could be dropped as part of the trade pact, the president said, “We may or may not put that in the trade agreement.”
Mr. Trump quickly added, “But we would only do that in conjunction with the attorney general of the United States.”
In January, the United States unveiled sweeping charges against Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, outlining a decade-long attempt by the company to steal trade secrets, obstruct a criminal investigation and evade economic sanctions on Iran. After Ms. Meng was arrested last year in Canada at the behest of American law enforcement, Mr. Trump told Reuters that he “would certainly intervene” in her case “if I thought it was necessary” for a trade deal.
Mr. Trump said Friday that American and Chinese negotiators had reached several areas of agreement in a series of meetings this week in Washington and indicated that would most likely forestall a planned increase in tariffs the United States levied on China last year. The two countries have been racing toward a March 1 deadline, when Mr. Trump had threatened to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from 10 percent.
While some significant hurdles remain, the two sides agreed to extend negotiations by 48 hours. American officials also announced that the two sides had reached what Mr. Trump termed a “final agreement” to stabilize China’s currency, though the specifics of the agreement were not immediately clear. The United States has been concerned that China could mitigate the effect of tariffs by weakening its currency, which would make Chinese products cheaper to purchase.
The Chinese delegation also presented Mr. Trump with a letter from Mr. Xi, as it did last month, which called on both sides to continue their efforts to reach a deal that benefits both countries. Liu He, who has been appointed Mr. Xi’s special envoy and is leading negotiations, concurred that he believed a deal was likely.
Mr. Trump’s advisers were more cautious, with Robert Lighthizer, Mr. Trump’s top trade negotiator, warning that the United States and China still have “very big hurdles” to overcome. Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, said it was “a little early for champagne.”
That the two sides were even putting pen to paper was a sign of progress for an increasingly rocky relationship between the world’s two largest economies. In meetings on Thursday and Friday, negotiators drafted a handful of memorandums of understanding covering protections for intellectual property, expanded access for foreign companies in China, Chinese purchases of American goods and other issues.
