China said to want further talks before signing Trump's 'phase one' deal

China reportedly wants to hold further talks with the US before signing US President Donald Trump's "phase one" deal on trade.

Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying that China wants more talks with the US as soon as the end of October to hammer out the details of the deal before president Xi Jinping agrees to sign it.

It was understood that Beijing could send a delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He, China’s top negotiator, to finalise a written deal that could be signed by both presidents at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next month in Chile.

A source also told Bloomberg that China wants Trump to scrap a planned tariff hike in December in addition to the hike scheduled for this week.

US and Chinese negotiators agreed a limited trade deal on Friday whereby the US would suspend a tariff hike on $250bn of Chinese imports that was due to kick in on Tuesday in exchange for China buying between $40bn and $50bn in US farm products and being more open about how the value of its currency is set.

The agreement was hailed by Trump as a "substantial phase one deal".

David Cheetham, chief market analyst at XTB, said: "The deal itself was fairly underwhelming when announced late on Friday with an increase in agricultural purchases and the avoidance of a marginal increase in the rate of levies seen as the bare minimum expected from the markets.

"The failure to even get this agreed upon is worrying and seeing as this is 'phase one' of Trump’s self- proclaimed big deal, there are now serious doubts as to whether phases two and three will ever even get off the ground."

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said: "The Trump trade deal looks to be unravelling. What’s concerning for the market is that the US and China are using different language to describe the deal and don’t seem to be on the page at all.

"It wasn’t even much of a deal in the first place - the fact that China is not yet even on board with it suggests very little progress has been made, and the possibility of further gains are limited. I’d be worried that the White House, worried about losing face, now throws the baby out with the bath water and abandons whatever goodwill there was. Steve Mnuchin on tap shortly may clarify the situation."