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Trump Agrees Not To Raise Tariff Levels on Chinese Goods; China Agrees To US Purchases. Two Sides To Start Broader Negotiations. (wsj.com)
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed Saturday to keep their trade war from escalating with a promise to temporarily halt the imposition of new tariffs [the link may be paywalled; alternative source], as the world's two largest economies negotiate a lasting agreement. China also agreed to further market opening, its foreign minister said. In a statement, White House said the U.S. had agreed not to increase tariffs on Chinese goods to 25% on Jan. 1. From a report: The truce between the U.S. and China emerged after a highly anticipated dinner Saturday between Trump and Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Argentina. The leaders agreed to stop the introduction of new tariffs and intensify their trade talks, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters hours later in Buenos Aires. The White House called the meeting "highly successful," saying the U.S. will leave existing tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods at 10 percent and refrain from raising that rate to 25 percent as planned on Jan. 1. In exchange, the U.S. wants an immediate start to talks on Trump's biggest complaints about Chinese trade practices: intellectual property theft, non-tariff barriers and cyber theft. After 90 days, if there's no progress on structural reform, the U.S. will raise those tariffs to 25 percent, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. China also agreed to boost its purchases of agricultural and industrial goods to reduce its trade imbalance with the U.S., she said.
He didn't cave. Current tariffs remain in place. Only the increase to 25% in January has been suspended pending further negotiations on IP theft and non-tariff barriers to trade. Overall, this is a pretty good outcome, and hopefully remaining issues can be resolved, and the existing tariffs can be lifted as well.
TFA is paywalled. Here is an alternative article.
So far, it's just discussion.
The common theme of President Trump throughout his presidency is this: he's a chaotic leader. You cannot question that he is an effective leader -- just look at the success he has at his rallies. I'm not saying you have to like the guy or his methods, but you have to at least acknowledge that he is successful at inspiring people to follow him. And he does it by being chaotic.
And his approach to China is no different. Just as he tells reporters about meeting Russia at the G20 summit ("Maybe I will, maybe I won't."), or about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in Khashoggi's death ("Maybe he knew, maybe he didn't."), Trump is consistently ambiguous and aloof regarding his position with practically anything. What he says to China today can still change tomorrow. There are no guarantees, only promises. And China is as good at keeping their promises as Trump is.
So, while that chaos does give us leverage against China (what little we have), I predict it's still going to get us nowhere in the end. While Trump may momentarily have the upper hand, he has a grievous fault that will work against it: he's narcissistic. It's impossible for him to negotiate for what's good for the United States. He negotiates for himself, aiming for outcomes that give him clout (i.e. USMCA, but don't you dare call it "New NAFTA") and economic gain (i.e. tax cuts). He doesn't give a damn about the soybean farmers and every other working class American suffering while this deal is getting negotiated and worked out. Nor will he care about who benefits or doesn't in the end, so long as he gets his.
What does is matter who owns them? If we ever went to war or something like that, it's pretty easy to seize those assets, since they're in the U.S. and so are the people who actually work on them. If Chinese investors do a better job running those farms, are Americans any worse off because they are more productive? If Chinese investors do a worse job, won't they just lose out to better run businesses?
since we let them buy up our hog farms. That was just nuts, BTW. Who the hell lets a hostile foreign power buy it's food supply? Seriously, who does that?
Do you think they packed up the hog farms and moved them to China?
China does not control our food supply. We control THEIR food supply. Or at least their pork supply.
Prior to buying the hog farms they were buying up American corn and soybeans, shipping them to China, and using them to raise hogs. Then they bought the hog farms so they could raise the hogs in America, and ship one jin of pork instead of 10 jin of pig food. It is just basic economic efficiency, and benefits both countries.
Smithfield Foods bought by Shuanghui Group
1 jin = 500g
Itâ(TM)s the 16th time that the Obama administration has taken complaints about China to the WTO. Of the seven cases that have been decided, the U.S. has won all seven.
yeah Obama did nothing...
How this bullshit gets uprated i'll never understand.
Obama has done NOTHING ? None of you moronic moderators could spend 2 minutes searching to verify that he did NOTHING ?
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
And that article came from the Washington Times. Run by a right wing lunatic. Don't believe me check out the headlines at the bottom of the page. So much for fake news.
The democrats will praise this when they figure out if it really helps or not, since Trump and many of the members of his administration lie often and with impunity.
Also too, those tariffs the Trumpbots are rallying around are being paid by you, not by China.
Absolute statements are never true
Right, but they bought less US agricultural products in response to the tariff. So, we're back to zero on agriculture as opposed to being in the negative.
Fentanyl was already a controlled substance. in China. In fact, it's just straight up illegal in China. It's legal in the US with a prescription. So they agreed to... not change their laws?
Ooh, they agreed to discuss things. I mean, yes that's progress. But they did the same discuss the exact same issue under Clinton, W. and Obama. It's what comes out of those talks that matters. And so far we've seen nothing (from any president from Clinton on).
Yeah. So far China's given up nothing other than holding off on their retaliation to our tariffs. In return, they made Trump blink. I'd call that winning.
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