Small U.S.-China Steps Included in the Phase One Trade Deal

Jan. 13, 2020 (EIRNS)—The Chinese trade delegation headed by Vice-Premier Liu He arrived in the United States today for the scheduled Jan. 15 signing of the phase one U.S.-China trade agreement. Its detailed content is still not published or known. However, the Wall Street Journal reported that as part of the agreement, the Treasury Department will release an update to its Foreign Exchange Report and remove the designation of China as a currency manipulator. That designation was made, very dubiously, by the Treasury on Aug. 5, 2019.

In addition, a Jan. 13 Global Times article was written on the United States and China having agreed to a semi-annual dialogue mechanism in connection with the trade agreement. It is essentially a dispute resolution mechanism for the agreement. Chen Fengying of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations says “It is hard to predict that the new mechanism will take dialogue between the two countries back to normal, given the U.S. protectionism under President Donald Trump, but it shows that, instead of fighting [a trade war], the U.S. now emphasizes solving problems through dialogue, which is much better than no dialogue at all.”

Another Global Times article itself notes that all reports of gigantic Chinese imports of food products, etc. are claims by U.S. officials, and that although China is increasing imports generally, it is doing so for its own growth. The headline is “China-U.S. Trade Deal To Boost Growth: Experts.” It is relevant in this regard that China’s imports from many Belt and Road countries are increasing strongly; Kenya’s, for one example, are up nearly 60%. And the United States itself is experiencing rising exports to China, across a number of sectors, before any agreement is signed.