Bloomberg:
Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters on Monday that the Chinese backsliding became apparent during their visit to Beijing last week but that they had been reassured by their Chinese interlocutors that everything would turn out.
That changed over the weekend when China sent through a new draft of an agreement that included them pulling back on language in the text on a number of issues, which had the “potential to change the deal very dramatically”, Mnuchin said. At that stage about 90 percent of the pact had been finalized, he said, and the Chinese wanted to reopen areas that had already been negotiated.
“We are not willing to go back on documents that have been negotiated in the past,” he said.