China’s state media still positive on phase one trade deal
Xinhua News Agency is remaining positive, and enjoying the sugar high given to financial markets by the as-yet-unsigned U.S.-China phase one trade deal. This is the first sentence of a story featured on the state organization’s Chinese homepage:
China and the United States have reached agreement on the text of the Phase One economic and trade agreement. Driven by this major positive news, after last Friday global stock markets rose again on the 16th, with multiple indexes hitting record highs.
But there’s plenty of doubt to go around:
“Can China actually buy $40 billion or more worth of U.S. farm products?” asks Reuters, while Bloomberg says (porous paywall) that plans to reroute trade from Hong Kong could “add around $10 billion” to China’s shopping bill at America’s agricultural store. The South China Morning Post warns that China faces “huge challenges” in living up to the deal, and says China-watchers are gearing up for a “noisy cease-fire.”
Related, from Reuters: The Trump administration is finalizing a set of narrow rules to limit exports of sophisticated technology to adversaries like China, a document seen by Reuters shows, in a boon to U.S. industry, which feared a much tougher crackdown on sales abroad.
—Jeremy Goldkorn
