'They want it': Trump approves US-China trade deal to halt Dec 15 tariffs

Election News
President Donald Trump signed off on a phase-one trade deal with China, averting the Dec. 15 introduction of a new wave of U.S. tariffs on about $160 billion of consumer goods from the Asian nation, according to people familiar with the matter.
The deal presented to Trump by trade advisers Thursday included a promise by the Chinese to buy more U.S. agricultural goods, according to the people. Officials also discussed possible reductions of existing duties on Chinese products, they said. The terms have been agreed but the legal text has not yet been finalized, the people said. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
The administration has reached out to allies on Capitol Hill and in the business community to issue statements of support once the announcement is made, they said. Before meeting his trade advisers, Trump engaged with members of the Business Roundtable, which represents some of the largest U.S. companies, people said.
Global stocks hit a record high and bond yields climbed on optimism over trade. On Thursday, Trump tweeted that the U.S. and China are “VERY close” to signing a “BIG” trade deal, also sending equities higher. The yuan surged the most in a year.
“They want it, and so do we!” he tweeted five minutes after equity markets opened in New York, sending stocks to new records.

Trump changed his mind on deals with China before. Negotiators have been working on the terms of the phase-one deal for months after the president announced in October that the two nations had reached an agreement that could be put on paper within weeks.The U.S. has added a 25% duty on about $250 billion of Chinese products and a 15% levy on another $110 billion of its imports over the course of a roughly 20-month trade war...Read More

Trump's trade deal with China may relieve Huawei from espionage charges

International News

The US-led campaign against Huawei Technologies Co., China’s telecom giant, has attracted a lot of attention for the indictment of the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. On Thursday, Huawei’s lawyers pleaded not guilty in a New York federal court to 13 counts of fraud involving an elaborate scheme to violate US sanctions against Iran.

That case is no doubt important, not only because of the possibility that Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, could face incarceration. It is also a major irritant in US-China trade talks.
That said, the case is a sideshow. Of greater consequence is a renewed US campaign to pressure and persuade America’s allies to keep Huawei technology and equipment out of the next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G. The stakes in this campaign are much bigger than U.S. market share or the effectiveness of Iran sanctions. If Huawei’s chips and routers find their way into this new network, everything from digital privacy to intellectual property could be at risk.

US intelligence agencies, along with those of many of its allies, have concluded that Huawei’s equipment provides China’s military with a backdoor into the telecom systems that use it.
“Huawei is a spy agency for the Communist Party of China, thinly veiled as a technology company,” says Senator Ted Cruz in a March 14 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.


 The U.S. intelligence community has been sounding this alarm for years. Only recently, however, have these worries begun to inform policy. Pompeo himself has been the public face of it, warning last month on a tour of Eastern Europe that it would be “difficult” for the U.S. to partner with countries that use Huawei equipment...Read More

Does Xi Jinping trust Trump enough to get on a plane and seal trade deal?

International News

Donald Trump regularly touts the strength of his personal relationship with Xi Jinping, talking about the Chinese leader in the sort of warm terms US presidents normally reserve for longstanding allies.
Yet as the world’s two largest economies inch towards a trade agreement designed to define and reorder their economic relationship for years to come, one question looms large: Does Xi trust Trump enough to get on a plane and seal the deal?

Trump and his aides have for weeks been pushing for Xi to agree to a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s club and resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to finalize a deal as soon as this month to end a dispute that has cast a shadow over the global economy. Trump himself has said that it’s only when the two leaders meet that the final details can be ironed out.

Chinese officials, however, have long been wary of putting Xi in a position where he might be embarrassed by an unpredictable Trump or forced into last-minute concessions.

“That is the real conundrum for Xi,’’ said Eswar Prasad, an expert on the Chinese economy at Cornell University who regularly meets with senior officials in Beijing. “The concern about being snookered by Trump at the negotiating table is a real risk for Xi.’’


 China’s worries are flipping the U.S. script on its head. As he claims to be the first American president to stand up to Beijing, his aides have built a possible deal on a foundation of distrust. In their view, a China that has for decades lied and cheated its way to economic success cannot be trusted to live up to any commitments unless a deal has teeth...Read More