It has taken a little time, but it now appears that the United States and China have concluded a deal and declared a truce in their trade war. Officials in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump — and Trump himself — last Friday said that the two sides reached agreement on "a phase one deal," but Beijing was slow to do the same. That reticence appears to have ended with Chinese officials now acknowledging that the two countries made progress and are calling the outcome "a deal." Their success is to be applauded, but only briefly. The agreement is only preliminary, it has not yet been committed to paper, and by all indications it does not address the big issues fundamental to the discord in their bilateral trade relationship.
Consistent with his belief that trade wars are effective tools of U.S. policy and easy to win, Trump has imposed steadily increasing sanctions on Chinese exports to the U.S. Today, the U.S. has levies on some $375 billion of Chinese imports, about 63 percent of the annual total of $550 billion. China has retaliated with tariffs on more than $110 billion worth of U.S. goods. Trump was prepared to double down despite the failure of sanctions to force Beijing's capitulation: This week, Washington was set to raise tariffs from 25 percent to 30 percent on $250 billion of Chinese goods.
Under last week's deal, the U.S. agreed to delay imposition of those tariffs while China will increase purchases of agricultural goods, increase access to its financial markets and improve protections on intellectual property. The purchase of additional $40 billion to $50 billion in farm products is a big deal. If carried out, it will be a near doubling of current sales to China, which have never exceeded $26 billion a year.