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The Chinese government has approved several domestic companies to buy U.S. cotton, corn, sorghum and pork without being subject to hefty retaliatory tariffs, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trade tensions likely helped push down U.S. economic growth last quarter to match the slowest pace of Donald Trump’s presidency, with a robust consumer spending keeping things from looking even worse.

The Chinese government has given the go-ahead for five companies to buy up to 3 million tons of U.S. soybeans free of retaliatory import tariffs as trade negotiations between the two nations continue, according to people familiar with the situation.

Slow progress and disagreement on key initial demands from Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is raising doubts about whether the U.S. and China will actually return to the negotiating table to overcome their much deeper differences.

President Donald Trump reiterated that he could impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports if he wants, after promising to hold off on more duties in a trade-war truce he reached with China’s Xi Jinping last month.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke on the phone with their Chinese counterparts as the two sides relaunch trade talks, marking the first high-level contact since their presidents agreed to a tentative truce last month.

President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping are set to meet June 29 amid hopes they will hit the pause button in their trade war and resume the search for a longer-term peace.

There’s no change to China’s conditions for making a trade deal with the United States as the nations’ leaders prepare to meet this weekend, a government spokesman said.

FedEx Corp. has fired a new weapon in the simmering U.S.-China trade war, suing the Trump administration to block enforcement of trade restrictions that had placed the company in Beijing’s crosshairs.

Global trade stumbled in April as the tariff war between the United States and China showed few signs of ending, figures released June 25 showed.