WASH­ING­TON—As Chi­na and the US near a new round of trade talks, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said yes­ter­day he doesn’t feel he needs to se­cure an agree­ment be­fore next year’s elec­tion.

Trump told re­porters he wants a com­plete deal with Chi­na and won’t ac­cept one that on­ly ad­dress­es some of the dif­fer­ences be­tween the two na­tions.

“I’m not look­ing for a par­tial deal, I’m look­ing for a com­plete deal,” Trump said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence with Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son.

For more than a year, the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a high-stakes du­el marked by Trump’s es­ca­lat­ing penal­ties on Chi­nese goods and Bei­jing’s re­tal­ia­to­ry tar­iffs.

Trump says vot­ers un­der­stand the “spat” be­tween the US and Chi­na and in­sist the on­go­ing trade war won’t ham­per his re­elec­tion chances, but he con­ced­ed that reach­ing an agree­ment “would prob­a­bly be a pos­i­tive” for his cam­paign.

Trump con­tin­ued to try to paint a dark pic­ture of the Chi­nese econ­o­my ahead of talks that re­sume next month in Wash­ing­ton. Ne­go­tia­tors from the two coun­tries are al­so en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions over the next two weeks to lay the ground­work for the Oc­to­ber ses­sion.

“Chi­na is be­ing af­fect­ed very bad­ly. We’re not,” Trump in­sist­ed.

It’s true that Chi­na’s econ­o­my is de­cel­er­at­ing, slowed by Trump’s tax­es on Chi­nese im­ports and by Bei­jing’s de­lib­er­ate cam­paign to com­bat run­away debts. Still, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund ex­pects the Chi­nese econ­o­my to grow 6.2 per cent this year.

Mor­ri­son said Aus­tralia has ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic growth. At the same time, he said once Chi­na’s econ­o­my got to a cer­tain lev­el, “then you need to be ob­vi­ous­ly play­ing to the same rules as those oth­er de­vel­oped na­tions.” (AP)

Mean­while, the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive up­dat­ed and ex­pand­ed its list of prod­ucts com­ing from Chi­na tem­porar­i­ly ex­clud­ed from im­port du­ties. The hun­dreds of prod­ucts list­ed in­clude such things as parts for au­to­mat­ic teller ma­chines, pow­er sup­ply ca­bles for air­planes, drone parts, drink­ing straws and elec­tron­i­cal­ly-pro­pelled skate­boards.

Trump al­so em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of pass­ing a new trade agree­ment with Cana­da and Mex­i­co. “Hope­ful­ly that’s go­ing to be put up to a vote very soon,” Trump said. “We need that for our coun­try.” (AP)