Claire Reade, who spent eight years negotiating with China as a senior figure in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), told the South China Morning Post that dramatic collapse in the U.S.-China talks in May suggested that Chinese negotiators did not have full political backing for the concessions they proposed to reach a deal to end the trade war.

China was reported to have made last minute, large-scale edits to a near-150 page trade agreement draft, which scuppered the prospects for a deal after 11 rounds of negotiations.

The changes suggested that Chinese negotiators never “really connected with all the people who needed to be connected to in order to make the deal”, said a veteran U.S. trade official.

Reade also added that unexpected changes mean there “is going to be a premium on being very careful and conservative” in future talks on the Chinese side.

“It is very normal for a piece of text to be proposed and the other side to then redline it back, but you don't have text that's been in place for months and all of a sudden come back striking-out what has been agreed. That's not normal - something happened,” she explained. 

Face-to-face talks are set to resume in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first time since May.