Mubasher: White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow reiterated his blame to Chinese President Xi Jinping for the lack of progress in the trade discussions between Washington and Beijing, reports said on Friday.

“He doesn’t want to move, and they’ve offered the US absolutely [...] no options regarding the issue of [intellectual property] theft and forced technology transfer,” the director of the National Economic Council told news agency Axios, warning that US President Donald Trump was “not going to let go” of the matter.

Earlier in the week, the US president’s senior adviser blamed for hampering talks that could end the trade war between the US and China, following the last round of talks between Trump administration officials and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He which centred on avoiding the punitive tariffs that took effect on 6 July.

“I do not think President Xi, at the moment, has any intention of following through on the discussions we made […] I think Xi is holding the game up,” Kudlow said during conference at the New York-based CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha.

Beijing had not “responded at all, not one basis point, to our request to do something about the theft of intellectual property and the forced divestiture of our technology,” Kudlow said at the conference.