China's foreign ministry is urging Washington to stop "misleading the public" on bilateral tariff negotiations, saying it's not familiar with reports on whether Beijing is planning to exempt tariffs on some US imports.
"The United States and China are not engaged in consultations or talks on the tariff issue," Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the ministry, said at a media briefing on Friday.
US President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that trade talks between the two countries were under way after both China's foreign ministry and commerce ministry denied such negotiations.
"They had a meeting this morning," Trump told reporters, declining to say to whom he was referring.
"It doesn't matter who 'they' is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we've been meeting with China."
A White House official said lower level in-person talks as well as a phone call between US and Chinese staff had taken place this week.
Guo said he was not familiar with the specifics of whether China was planning tariff exemptions on some US imports.
The back-and-forth remarks by Beijing and Washington add further confusion as to when and whether the world's two largest economies would start talks on high levies on each others' goods.
Multiple rounds of tariff hikes and retaliative measures have raised US tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 per cent and China's on US imports to 125 per cent, upending the operations of many businesses on both sides.
The Trump administration had said it would look at lowering tariffs on some imported Chinese goods, pending talks with Beijing, Reuters reported, whereas China said the US should cancel all "unilateral" tariffs if it wanted to solve the trade issue.
On Friday, China's top policymakers convened a meeting where they highlighted the need to support businesses and workers amid rising "external shocks".
Tit-for-tat tariffs that began with US President Donald Trump's announcement of hefty import levies on April 2 had threatened to stall trade between the world's two biggest economies and sparked fears of a slowdown in global growth.
This week, the US shifted its tone and said the situation was unsustainable, and China is considering exempting some US imports from its 125 per cent tariffs in the biggest sign yet of Beijing's concerns about the economic fallout.
The moves were the latest signs that the world's two largest economies were prepared to rein in their trade war.