The diplomatic cable from Beijing arrived in Washington late on Friday night, with systematic edits to a nearly 150-page draft trade agreement that would blow up months of negotiations between the world's two largest economies, according to three U.S. government sources and three private sector sources briefed on the talks. The document was riddled with reversals by China that undermined core U.S. demands, the sources told Reuters. In each of the seven chapters of the draft trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war: theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation. China's President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump attend a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017. Nicolas Asfouri | AFP | Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump responded in a tweet on Sunday vowing to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10% to 25% on Friday – timed to land in the middle of a scheduled visit by China's Vice Premier Liu He to Washington to continue trade talks. The stripping of binding legal language from the draft struck directly at the highest priority of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer - who views changes to Chinese laws as essential to verifying compliance after years of what U.S. officials have called empty reform promises. Lighthizer has pushed hard for an enforcement regime more like those used for punitive economic sanctions – such as those imposed on North Korea or Iran – than a typical trade deal. "This undermines the core architecture of the deal," said a Washington-based source with knowledge of the talks. 'Process of negotiation' Spokespeople for the White House, the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a briefing on Wednesday that working out disagreements over trade was a "process of negotiation" and that China was not "avoiding problems." Geng referred specific questions on the trade talks to the Commerce Ministry, which did not respond immediately to faxed questions from Reuters. Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were taken aback at the extent of the changes in the draft. The two cabinet officials on Monday told reporters that Chinese backtracking had prompted Trump's tariff order but did not provide details on the depth and breadth of the revisions. Liu last week told Lighthizer and Mnuchin that they needed to trust China to fulfill its pledges through administrative and regulatory changes, two of the sources said. Both Mnuchin and Lighthizer considered that unacceptable, given China's history of failing to fulfil reform pledges. One private-sector source briefed on the talks said the last round of negotiations had gone very poorly because "China got greedy". "China reneged on a dozen things, if not more ... The talks were so bad that the real surprise is that it took Trump until Sunday to blow up," the source said. "After 20 years of having their way with the U.S., China still appears to be miscalculating with this administration." Further talks this week The rapid deterioration of negotiations rattled global stock markets, bonds and commodities this week. Until Sunday, markets had priced in the expectation that officials from the two countries were close to striking a deal. Investors and analysts questioned whether Trump's tweet was a negotiating ploy to wring more concessions from China. The sources told Reuters the extent of the setbacks in the revised text were serious and that Trump's response was not merely a negotiating strategy. Chinese negotiators said they couldn't touch the laws, said one of the government sources, calling the changes "major." Changing any law in China requires a unique set of processes that can't be navigated quickly, said a Chinese official familiar with the talks. The official disputed the assertion that China was backtracking on its promises, adding that U.S. demands were becoming more "harsh" and the path to a deal more "narrow" as the negotiations drag on.<doc-sep>Reuters quotes some sources with the knowledge of what prompted the US President Trump’s tweet on tariffs hike threat. The sources cited that China has backtracked on legal issues throughout text of proposed US trade agreement, affecting nearly every chapter. Additional Headlines: China sought changes to text in IP protection and theft, tech transfer, financial services access and competition policy. 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FILE PHOTO: Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, right, poses with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, left, before they proceed to their meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Wednesday, May 1, 2019. Andy Wong/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China had backtracked on commitments in trade talks, prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to threaten additional tariffs over the weekend, but Washington would be willing to keep talking if the Chinese changed position, top U.S. trade officials said on Monday. “Over the course of the last week or so we have seen ... an erosion in commitments by China,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told reporters. He said China had retreated from specific commitments, a move that would have led to substantive changes in the text of the deal. “That in our view is unacceptable,” he said. A delegation from China will be in Washington on Thursday and Friday and Lighthizer said he expected top Chinese negotiator Vice Premier Liu He will attend. Trump wants to see a deal with substantial structural changes but that is not where the two sides are at the moment, Lighthizer said as he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin briefed reporters. Lighthizer said the Chinese pulled back on some commitments reached in the talks over the last week or so and that was what precipitated Trump’s tweet on Sunday promising to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent by the end of the week. Mnuchin said it would be unfortunate if the two sides, the world’s biggest economies, could not conclude an agreement and they had hoped to conclude a deal by the end of the week. If they hear something different from the Chinese this week, Mnuchin said, they will report that to Trump.