President Donald Trump said any trade deal with China is probably still weeks away though both sides are making progress on an accord that could be “very monumental.”

“We have a ways to go,” Trump told reporters at a meeting Thursday with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at the White House. “We are rounding the turn.”

Liu met with the president after two days of talks between Chinese and American trade negotiators in Washington. Trump didn’t announce a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping—a meeting Trump has said is critical to finalizing an agreement. A month ago, Trump was touting the idea of a “signing summit” with Xi, with aides suggesting the meeting could take place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

“If we have a deal, then we’ll have a summit,” Trump said. It may take four weeks to put together a framework for the deal and two weeks more to put the details on paper, he said.

Trump’s remarks prolong the uncertainty over whether the world’s two-biggest economies can end their nine-month trade war, which has disrupted supply chains, whipsawed markets, and weighed on the world economy. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde this week warned both sides to avoid the “self-inflicted” wound of a protracted trade conflict.

An administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that talks would continue in Washington on Friday. There’s no timetable for further negotiations after that, the official said.

Not Easy

“Nobody thought these talks would be easy, but as they enter these final stages, we’re encouraged by the continued progress towards detailed text on both structural and enforcement issues,” Linda Dempsey, a vice president at the National Association of Manufacturers, said in an emailed statement. “Those issues are critical: Manufacturers in the United States have long been harmed by China’s unfair trade practices.”

Trump said the remaining sticking points are intellectual-property protection, tariffs and enforcement of the deal. He said he would discuss tariffs with Liu in their meeting but didn’t elaborate. “We’ve agreed to far more than we have left to agree to,” he said.

2025 Commitments

Drafts of an agreement to end a nearly yearlong trade war would give Beijing until 2025 to meet commitments on commodity purchases and allow American companies to wholly own enterprises in the Asian nation, according to people familiar with the talks. Those would be binding pledges that could trigger U.S. retaliation if unfulfilled, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Other non-binding promises China has offered to implement by 2029 wouldn’t be tied to potential U.S. retaliation, they said, without elaborating.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Thursday that there were still major issues to resolve in the agreement. Peter Navarro, a White House trade adviser, said that “the last mile of the marathon is actually the longest and the hardest.”

The limited scope and time frame of the deal raises questions about whether it would reshape the longer-term economic relationship, rather than simply serve as a political win for Trump ahead of his re-election campaign.