A free trade agreement between the U.S. and the United Kingdom will increase trade between the two countries by “three or four times,” Vice President Mike Pence said, adding that the U.S. is ready to work on a deal as soon as the U.K. leaves the European Union.

Wendy Cutler, former acting deputy U.S. trade representative, says that the first bucket of Section 301 tariffs, the ones tailored to Made in China 2025, worked. Even though Cutler is generally not a fan of tariffs, she said, "I think those succeeded … in getting China to negotiate in earnest."

A China Ministry of Commerce press release says that the U.S. treasury secretary and the U.S. trade representative agreed to host trade negotiations in Washington in early October. Working-level staff will negotiate in mid-September, the announcement said. Former Acting Deputy USTR Wendy Cutler, speaking just after the release came out on Sept. 5, said it's the working level staff meetings that hold the most promise for progress. While the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative did not confirm a specific date, the agency told reporters Sept. 4 that meetings between the USTR and top Chinese officials will be held "in the coming weeks," and that the mid-September meetings of deputy-level officials would lay the groundwork.

President Donald Trump told reporters that the negotiating meeting planned for September with the Chinese "is still on." He told reporters on Sept. 2 that "that hasn’t changed. They haven’t changed and we haven’t. We’ll see what happens."

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke's presidential campaign released a detailed trade agenda that talked about how he would undo some of what he called President Donald Trump's "disastrous trade war," and how he would advance trade liberalization, if he were elected.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service released an Aug. 28 report on China’s increased tariffs on U.S. goods, including translations of the measures, their scope and descriptions of each product that will fall under the new tariffs. The report includes dates that tariffs will be imposed on each product. The report also includes separate lists of U.S. agricultural products, fisheries products and forestry products impacted by each round of additional tariffs.

A China Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson denied knowledge for a second straight day of China's top trade negotiators phoning their U.S. counterparts over the weekend urging the resumption of talks toward a comprehensive trade deal, as President Donald Trump claimed they had on the sidelines of the G-7 summit.

Both the United Kingdom and the United States touted the potential of a free trade agreement after the U.K. leaves the European Union. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to the press in France after breakfast during the G-7 conference. "We're going to do a very big trade deal -- bigger than we've ever had with the U.K.," Trump said. He said he didn't anticipate any problems in negotiating it and predicted it would happen "pretty quickly."

France said it will oppose a recently signed European Union trade deal with several South American countries, including Brazil, because of what French President Emmanuel Macron called Brazil’s failure to stop the burning of the Amazon rainforest, according to an Aug. 23 Associated Press report. Macron said France cannot approve the trade deal “in its current state.” In addition to Brazil, the EU deal with MERCOSUR involves Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. “The decisions and statements from Brazil these recent weeks show clearly that President [Jair] Bolsonaro has decided to not respect his commitments on the climate, nor to involve himself on the issue of biodiversity,” Macron said in a statement, according to the AP.

Economic cooperation between China and the U.S. is “win-win in nature,” a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson said Aug. 21. “Our interests have become deeply intertwined.” He was responding to President Donald Trump's lengthy remarks at the White House accusing China of “ripping this country off for 25 years.” American companies do $700 billion in annual sales and make $50 billion in annual profit in China, the spokesperson said. “If one party has been ripping off the other, it would not have been possible to have the highly complementary, deeply integrated and mutually beneficial relationship that we have today.” China and the U.S. “stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation,” he said. “There is nothing to fear in having differences on trade.”