The United States has reached a “very substantial” Phase 1 trade deal with China, President Donald Trump announced on here Friday, giving a boost to the stock market in New York.
“We’ve come to a very substantial Phase 1 deal,” Trump told reporters at the White House following his meeting with the visiting Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.
However, the announcement came with a rider that the agreement was still to be put on to the paper, which will take somewhere between three to five weeks.
The US and China trade negotiations had collapsed early this year after Beijing backed off from a draft agreement that was negotiated over six months.
Trump, however, appeared to be more confident this time and said that it might be formally inked in Chile later this year.
“We’ve come to a deal on intellectual property, financial services, a tremendous deal for the farmers, a purchase of $40-50 billion worth of agricultural products. To show you how big that is, that would be three times what China had purchased at its highest point thus far,” he said.
China, he said, were purchasing products worth $16 or 17 billion at the highest point and that would be brought up to $40 billion to $50 billion.
“So I’d suggest farmers have to go and immediately buy more land and get bigger tractors. They’ll be available at John Deere and a lot of other great distributors,” he said.
Currency and foreign exchange were other big issues over which the two countries had reached an agreement, he said.
“We have an agreement around transparency into the foreign exchange markets and free markets,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
“We have also made very good progress on technology transfer and will put some of the technology transfer in Phase 1. Phase 2 negotiations will start immediately after we’ve concluded Phase 1 and papered it. And I think Phase 1 should happen quickly,” Trump said.
The US president said the both sides reached an agreement on intellectual property and financial services.
“The banks and all of the financial services companies will be very, very happy with what we’ve been able to get. I think China is going to be very happy because they’ll be served very well by these great institutions being able to go into China,” said the president.
Commenting on the technology transfer, Trump said, “We will have some technology transfer in the agreement. But, technology transfer will largely be done here and also in Phase 2. So, we’re going to start negotiating Phase 2 after Phase 1 is completed and signed.”
The Chinese vice premiere said it was agreed that keeping the China-US economic relationship right would be in the interest of the two sides and the whole world.
“And we are making a lot of progress towards a positive direction,” he said.
