U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday trade talks with China are making important progress, after discussions earlier this week with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.
Trump said ending the trade war with China could produce the "biggest deal ever made."
He also said China agreed to criminalize the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which will "have a huge impact" on the flow of the drug into the United States.
Trump's comments follow negotiations aimed at resolving trade frictions between the economic superpowers. He said he may soon hold more talks with top Chinese officials.
WATCH: Possible Trump-Xi Meeting to Settle Trade War
Political commentator and author Pokong Chen told VOA, "The focus of this negotiation was not on the trade agreement, but on getting Trump to meet with Xi Jinping again."
Trump may meet with Chinese President Xi when he travels to Asia for his planned second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which is expected to take place in Vietnam late this month.
The United States has long complained that Beijing forces American companies to transfer their technology to Chinese firms while it limits access to China's vast market.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio told VOA, "There needs to be equilibrium in our relationship. And it cannot be that they can do anything they want here, but they restrict everything we want to do. And it cannot be that they steal the things we innovate and then use that to put our companies out of business."
The talks were complicated by Monday's U.S. indictment of the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies, Meng Wanzhou.
Meng, Huawei and the company's affiliates are accused of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran and deceiving financial institutions and the U.S. government. China was angered by Meng's December arrest in Canada following an extradition request from the United States.
The trade talks follow December's agreement between Trump and Xi to stop the tit-for-tat tariff conflict between the two countries for 90 days. The Trump administration has imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to compel Beijing to change its trading practices, prompting Beijing to retaliate with its own tariff increases on $110 billion of U.S. exports.
Unless a deal is reached by March 2, U.S. tariffs will rise from 10 percent to 25 percent.
VOA's Mandarin Service contributed to this report.
