The United States and China are moving toward ending their trade dispute. The two countries have reached a broad consensus on alleviating the trade imbalances, but there are still some differences.

Negotiators are drawing up memorandums of understanding on structural issues: forced technology transfer and cyber theft, intellectual property rights, services, currency, agriculture and non-tariff barriers to trade. The MoUs covers most complex issues affecting the trading relationship between the two countries and are meant, from the US perspective, to end the practices that led the US to start levying duties on Chinese imports in the first place.

Work on the MoUs is a significant step in getting China to sign up both to broad principles and to specific commitments on key issues. The world’s two largest economies have slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods, slowing global economic growth, skewing supply chains and disrupting manufacturing.

The United States has accused China of forcing US companies doing business in China to share their technology with local partners and hand over intellectual property secrets. China denies it engages in such practices.

The US also objects to non-tariff barriers in China, including industrial subsidies, regulations, business licensing procedures, product standards reviews and other practices.