Mnuchin, speaking in a roundtable interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Washington office, said the two sides had held several phone conversations in recent weeks and were still in the process of planning further formal discussions.

“We’re in the process of confirming the logistics of several meetings and we’re determined to make sure that we use the time wisely, to try to resolve this,” Mnuchin said. Both sides are now focused on trying “to document an agreement” by a March 1 deadline for their current tariffs truce to run out. “We expect there will be meetings in January,” he said. Previously the administration hadn’t been specific on the timing of talks.

The two sides are planning to meet in January, according to Chinese officials with knowledge of the discussions who asked not to be named as the talks were private. China’s Ministry of Commerce didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.

Mnuchin said neither he nor President Donald Trump were aware of the arrest of a senior executive from Huawei Technologies Co. when they met with China’s Xi Jinping for dinner on Dec. 1, the same day that the company’s chief financial officer was arrested in Canada.

The Treasury secretary also sought to play down the president’s declaration last week that he would be willing to intervene on Huawei’s behalf if it was necessary to help reach a trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.

“We’ve been very clear and China understands that these are separate tracks,’’ Mnuchin said.

Xi’s Defiant End to 2018 Signals More US-China Tension Ahead

He and the president had not had “any direct conversations’’ about the Huawei case, Mnuchin said. He also declined to comment on whether the Treasury Department was preparing a broader case against the Chinese telecommunications-equipment provider, which has been accused by the US of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Hawks in the Trump administration have long raised questions about just how much the US should trust any promises of economic reforms made by Xi given the experience of past administrations in dealing with Beijing. But Mnuchin said the two sides had agreed that any eventual deal would be “enforceable and verifiable and have specific dates on it.”

“We are determined that if we have an agreement it will be specific enough that time frames and details and everything else will be laid out,’’ he said.

Reducing the trade deficit with China remained a major priority for Trump but Mnuchin said the administration understood it would take time and was also focused on securing structural changes in the Chinese economy that would help balance trade. The US’s monthly trade deficit in goods with China hit a record in October and is on track to have expanded through the first two years of the Trump presidency.

“I don’t think that we’d expect that overnight,’’ Mnuchin said of the prospect of eliminating the trade deficit with China. But he said the US and China had agreed on the need for more balanced trade and that would set the stage for meaningful change. (bbn)

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