After more than two years of rising tension, the US and China have signed a deal aimed at calming trade frictions. The agreement has been hard-fought, but it is unclear how much economic relief from their trade war it will offer.
Tariffs – in some cases at a lower rate – will remain in place. Analysts say it’s unlikely that the deal will produce gains sufficient to outweigh the losses already suffered.
Trump said during a White House ceremony that the deal is “righting the wrongs of the past.” He promoted the signing as a way of delivering economic justice for American workers and said, “We mark a sea change in international trade with the signing.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a letter to Trump that was read by Beijing’s chief negotiator Liu He, said concluding the first phase of the trade deal was “good for China, the US and for the whole world”
But the “Phase 1” trade agreement would do little to force China to make the major economic changes such as reducing unfair subsidies for its own companies that the Trump administration sought when it started the trade war by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports in July 2018.
The deal is hoped to lower tensions in a trade dispute that has slowed global growth, hurt American manufacturers and weighed on the Chinese economy.
