US trade chief Robert Lighthizer says China phase-one trade deal ‘totally done’ and will ‘nearly double’ US exports
- US trade representative said the success of the deal, announced on Friday, will depend on whether reformers or hardliners are making the decisions in Beijing
- He said there would be some routine ‘scrubs’ to the text and that a date and location for the signing is still being determined
The “phase one” US-China trade deal will nearly double US exports to China over the next two years and is “totally done” despite the need for translation and revisions to its text, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Sunday.
Lighthizer, speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation program, said there would be some routine “scrubs” to the text but “this is totally done, absolutely.”
Lighthizer said a date and location for senior US and Chinese officials to formally sign the agreement is still being determined.
The deal, announced on Friday after more than two and a half years of on-and-off negotiations between Washington and Beijing, will reduce some US tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for increased Chinese purchases of US agricultural, manufactured and energy products by some US$200 billion over the next two years.
China has also pledged in the agreement to better protect US intellectual property, to curb the coerced transfer of American technology to Chinese firms, to open its financial services market to US firms and to avoid manipulation of its currency.
Chinese purchases of agricultural goods are expected to increase to US$40 billion to US$50 billion annually over the next two years, Lighthizer said. The United States exported about US$24 billion in farm products to China in 2017, the last full year before the world’s two largest economies launched a tariff war on each others’ goods in July 2018.
Trade war breakthrough: US and China reach phase-one deal
But Lighthizer said the success of the deal, announced on Friday, will be up to decisions by officials Beijing.
“Ultimately, whether this whole agreement works is going to be determined by who’s making the decisions in China, not in the United States,” Lighthizer said. “If the hardliners are making the decisions we’re going to get one outcome, if the reformers are making the decisions, which is what we hope, then we’re going to get another outcome.”
He said it would not solve all of the problems between the United States and China, because integrating China’s state-dominated economic system with America’s private-sector led system will take years.
Lighthizer called Friday the “most momentous day in trade history” because of the China deal and because the White House sent a revised US-Mexico-Canada Agreement to Congress for approval votes. The two trade deals together cover some US$2 trillion in overall trade, he said.
But the USMCA, which would replace the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, has run into some last minute snags as Mexico’s chief negotiator, Jesus Seade, has objected to congressional language on implementation of the trade deal that calls for the designation of up to five US experts to monitor Mexico’s compliance with labour reforms.
Seade is due to travel to Washington on Sunday to raise his objections with Lighthizer.
