Sino File | US-China trade war: ignore the hype, Trump and Xi are no closer to a deal, even if they are ‘friends’

Neither leader has agreed to anything more than they had previously

The lack of a deadline to negotiate the final ‘10 per cent’ of sticking points betrays a lack of confidence that doing so is even possible

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US President Donald Trump with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka. They might be ‘friends’, but are they any closer to a trade deal? Photo: Reuters

Published: 11:15am, 7 Jul 2019Updated: 11:15am, 7 Jul 2019

The accord signed between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka is not a deal, even if it does offer some hope the two leaders might one day achieve an agreement.

Much has been made about the “breakthrough” at their high-stakes meeting, when the pair agreed to resume the negotiations that had fallen apart in May, bringing to an end a months-long impasse.

But while the truce may have prevented the tit-for-tat tariff war from escalating into a full-blown trade war, and saved China-US relations from deteriorating further, little has changed from the last time they met.

The accord, in which the two leaders agreed to refrain from imposing new or higher tariffs on each other’s goods, is similar to what emerged from the last Trump-Xi meeting at the G20 summit in Argentina in December.

Neither leader has agreed to anything more than they had previously, despite their agreement to return to the bargaining table. That says only that negotiators will continue to confront the same tough issues that derailed negotiations two months ago.

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