China offers six-year plan to cut trade surplus with US to zero, Bloomberg reports

China has offered to embark on a six-year $1.0trn buying spree of US goods in a bid to reconfigure the trade relationship between the two economic giants and reduce its trade surplus with America to zero by 2024, Bloomberg reported.

The newswire cited officials familiar with the negotiations and one of those sources in particular as having provided the numerical target.

US negotiators reportedly reacted with skepticism, while asking China to close the gap in two years.

One of Bloomberg's sources said the offer - which was made during the fist round of talks in early January - implied an increase in Chinese annual imports of US goods from $155bn last year to approximately $200bn in 2019, followed by incremental steps thereafter until reaching $600bn by 2024.

In early 2018 Beijing had already offered to boost its purchases from the US "significantly" although no numerical targets were reported at the time.

It was not the first time China had offered to cut its surplus, with the country having already proposed to do so in the past, but in exchange for access to products deemed to incorporate sensitive technologies, an option that had always proved anathema to Washington on national security grounds.