mobanmarketWASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Friday announced a partial trade deal with China after talks in Washington with Vice Premier Liu He.
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Here are the main points of the agreement, which has yet to be signed.
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A deal, in principle: Trump said he hoped to have a deal signed with President Xi Jinping “in four weeks, five weeks, something like that.”
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The signing could take place in the middle of November in Chile on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
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“We have a fundamental understanding on the key issues … but there is more work to do,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters.
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“We will not sign an agreement unless we get, and can tell the president, that this is on paper.”
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Mnuchin said Liu needed “to go back to do some work with his team, but we have made a lot of progress over the last two days,” signalling that approval from the highest level in Beijing would be sought.
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Previous apparent breakthroughs have faced opposition in Beijing and seen a resumption of the trade war.
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Agriculture: China has pledged to rapidly increase purchases of US farm goods to $40-50 billion a year — a sharp rise that would be more than double the level in 2017.
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In 2017, before the trade war started, China imported $19.5 billion of US farm output, falling to just over $9 billion in 2018.
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Financial services and currencies: “We’ve had good discussions with … the head of the People’s Bank of China, their central bank,” Mnuchin said Friday.
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“We have also had extensive discussions on financial services opening up their markets to our financial services firms. So we have pretty much almost a complete agreement on both of those issues. “Currency has been a very big concern … and we have an agreement around transparency into the foreign exchange markets and free markets, so we are very pleased with that.”
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The US Treasury in August branded China a currency manipulator, accusing Beijing of deliberately weakening the yuan to gain unfair trade advantages.
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Technology transfer: Trump said the talks had “made very good progress on technology transfer” — a key point of friction.
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Without giving further details, he said an agreement could be reached soon, with US companies sharing their know-how in exchange for access to Chinese markets.
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Intellectual property: “We have an agreement on intellectual property,” the US president said, claiming another obstacle to an overall deal had been overcome.
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Settling disputes: US chief negotiator Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said a dispute settlement mechanism was being finalised.
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The mechanism is seen as essential by the United States to enforcing any agreement.
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Lighthizer said the next round of tariffs due to hit on December 15 could be cancelled.
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