Sino File | Forget Trump-Xi trade war ‘truce’, the US-China rivalry is just getting started
- Washington and Beijing may have smoothed over tensions for now, but they are destined to remain the world’s chief political adversaries
While the agreement not to introduce new punitive tariffs may have opened the door to further talks, it will still be a challenge for negotiators to craft a comprehensive solution to a host of simmering issues within the 90-day ceasefire period. That is why Trump, despite talking up the results of the summit, threatened more punitive tariffs if the sides could not reach an agreement on time.
Obviously, Beijing is more eager to reach a deal and thus made major, one-sided compromises to meet US demands. American officials revealed that Beijing submitted a three-page document in which Chinese negotiators had subdivided 53 “structural issues” raised by the US into 142 items, and classified them as either “agreeable for mutual concession”, “negotiable” or “unacceptable”.
Based on the available information, we can break down most of the issues into these three rough categories.
The first category includes Beijing’s promise to buy a “very substantial” amount of agricultural, energy and industrial goods from the US. The White House has revealed that China agreed to buy US$1.2 trillion worth of US products.
It is easy for the Chinese to resume buying items they had essentially stopped importing in recent months, including soybeans, crude oil, and sorghum. No one doubts China’s goodwill in taking actions to reduce the huge trade imbalance between the two countries.