President Trump, preparing to meet a Chinese trade delegation Thursday, said trade talks with China are going well but the US won’t reach any final agreement until he sits down again with President Xi Jinping.

“I think we can do it by March 1st. Can you get it down on paper by March 1st, I don’t know. I can tell you on March 1st the tariff on China goes to 25 percent,” Trump said at the White House.

US and Chinese negotiators on Wednesday opened two days of high-level talks aimed at settling a trade war that has weakened both economies, shaken financial markets and clouded the outlook for global trade.

Trump has set a March 1 deadline for increasing tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports from 10 percent to 25 percent.

He sounded optimistic about the negotiations — and said the tariffs he slapped on China were helping the US economy.

“We’re taking in billions of dollars, and frankly we’re creating a lot of industry. It’s a lot of work because this is a very comprehensive deal. We’re talking about they’re going to buy some corn. Hopefully, they’re going to buy lots of corn and lots of wheat and lots of everything else that we have, but they’re also talking heavy technology, heavy manufacturing services and everything else,” Trump said.

Analysts are skeptical that the world’s two biggest economies can reach any comprehensive deal over the next month.

The US is essentially demanding that China downsize its economic aspirations to become a supreme world leader in such fields as robotics and electric cars.

The American delegation is led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a longtime critic of aggressive Chinese trade practices and of US policies that failed to blunt them.

The core of the US allegations against China is that Beijing systematically steals trade secrets, requires foreign companies to hand over technology to access the Chinese market and unfairly subsidizes its own tech companies.

With AP