While China is making many of the structural changes it promised on issues such as intellectual property protection, its purchases of U.S. goods are well below where they need to be to meet promised targets, and there’s almost no chance they can be fulfilled now with the damage Covid-19 has done to the global economy. A collapse of the deal risks leading to a return of the tit-for-tat tariff war that hurt trade and companies around the world.
“The phase one trade deal has been the bright spot in the relationship,” Charles Freeman, senior vice president for Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg Television Wednesday. “I’m certain the president looks at the election and equity markets and realizes that as challenging as it might be to get the commitments implemented by China that his folks have engineered, it probably would be worse to just scrap the deal entirely.”
About the author
Since 1995, providing gold investors with the latest precious metals information & financial truth!
