(Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Thursday said he expects to make a trade deal with China, though he offered no specifics or indications of how talks would get underway with the two superpowers at an apparent impasse.

“Oh we’re going to make a deal,” Trump said from the White House in response to a reporter’s question about picking up the phone to call China’s President Xi Jinping. “I think we are going to make a very good deal with China.”

Earlier on Thursday, China’s commerce ministry urged the United States to stop putting “extreme pressure” on the world’s second-largest economy and demanded respect in any trade talks, but the two sides remained at an impasse over who should start those talks.

While Trump has temporarily relaxed his recently announced hefty tariffs on goods from dozens of trading partners, he left in place his new import levies on Chinese goods that summed together total 145%.

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(Reporting by White House team; Editing by Chris Reese)