About That “Underwhelming” US-China Trade Deal: Much Less Than Meets The Eye

Overnight, the US Department of Treasury released the initial result of the 100-day Sino-China trade and economic negotiations, a month after the presidential summit at Mar-a-Lago in early April. Under the negotiations led by Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross in the United States and Vice Premier Wang Yang from China, the two countries reached agreements on some “early harvest” items and made progress on some key issues in agricultural trade, financial services, investment, and the energy area.
While there were no surprises in the agreement, whose terms had been leaked previously by the president himself, here are some of the key details per Citi:
Consensus reached to open China’s market wider for US agricultural and energy products On agricultural trade, China will allow imports of US beef on conditions consistent with international food safety and animal health standards and consistent with the 1999 Agricultural Cooperation Agreement, and will hold a meeting in May to conduct science-based evaluations of pending U. S. biotechnology product applications. Meanwhile, US promises to resolve the issue on importing cooked poultry products from China. In the energy field, US will treat China no less favorably than other non-FTA trade partners with regard to LNG export authorizations.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 12, 2017.