‘Epic’ China Trade Deal Near Completion, Trump Says, but Haggling Continues

“Last week @POTUS told us he would not sign a ‘good’ trade deal with #China he would only sign a ‘great’ one,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said in a Twitter post on Thursday morning. “I believe him. But to be a ‘great’ deal it must allow us to do in China what they can do in US it must have real enforcement mechanisms.”

The United States has pressed China to make commitments on purchasing American goods, opening markets to foreign business and increasing protections for foreign intellectual property in a bid to rebalance an economic relationship that Mr. Trump says is unfair for American workers. It remains to be seen how sweeping and significant any agreement will be, and whether it will achieve the lofty promises Mr. Trump has made about resetting the economic relationship with Beijing.

But the White House is also facing pressure to resolve the trade war, which has begun to hurt American farming, manufacturing and other sectors, and caused wild swings on Wall Street. Industries including automaking, technology manufacturing and farming have anxiously awaited reduced tariffs and details of a new agreement, which will have huge implications for their businesses.

The president’s tariffs have been successful at bringing the Chinese to the negotiating table, and his advisers have insisted they will not squander an opportunity to press China for substantial economic reforms that past administrations were unable to secure. Still, the Chinese have balked at making any reforms that could be viewed as infringing on their sovereignty or undercutting the Communist Party’s control of the economy.

“If you and I are making a deal, and you have to drag me kicking and screaming the whole way, what are the odds the deal is going to hold?” asked Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “I don’t find that the slightest bit convincing.”

American negotiators have pushed for an enforcement mechanism that would allow tariffs on Chinese goods to snap back if China violated the terms of the deal, and that would forbid China to retaliate. But Chinese negotiators have resisted such an idea, describing it as a potential infringement on their sovereignty.

Myron Brilliant, the executive vice president and head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said foreign stakeholders would be scrutinizing the deal to see whether it contained a strong enforcement mechanism that would hold the Chinese accountable to their obligations.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/business/economy/trump-xi-china-trade-meeting.html?partner=rss&emc=rss