US-China trade deal ‘totally done’ insists envoy, despite unfinished translation

The first phase of a trade deal between the US and China is “totally done”, according to US Trade representative Robert Lighthizer – despite the text having not yet been translated amid ongoing unwillingness from Beijing to back up Donald Trump’s claims on the scale of the deal.

With translations and revisions of the text still yet to be made, and a date for the document to be signed yet to be set, the Trump appointed trade envoy for the US insisted the agreement was "totally done, absolutely."

Initially announced on Friday, the agreement would see a reduction of some US tariffs in return for Chinese purchases of US agricultural, manufactured and energy products increasing by some $200bn over the next two years.

The ongoing trade war has posed a particular risk for US agricultural workers, with Beijing placing tariffs on key crops like soybeans from the country – albeit while providing Chinese importers with waivers for 11 million tonnes of produce.

However while president Trump has maintained China would spend $50bn more on farm products, Beijing has refused to commit to specific figures – instead saying imports would increase by “a notable margin”.

The US exported about $24 billion in farm products to China in 2017, the last full year before the world's two largest economies launched a tariff war on each others' goods in July 2018.

Mr Lighthizer told CBS’ Face the Nation programme “Ultimately, whether this whole agreement works is going to be determined by who's making the decisions in China, not in the United States.

"If the hard-liners are making the decisions we're going to get one outcome, if the reformers are making the decisions, which is what we hope, then we're going to get another outcome."

The deal also includes pledges from China to better protect US intellectual property, to curb the coerced transfer of American technology to Chinese firms, to open its financial services market to US firms and to avoid manipulation of its currency.

However the agreement could still be derailed in the time it takes Xi Jinping and Donald Trump to put ink to paper- and are unlikely to have been aided by revelations in the New York Times that Washington secretly moved to expel two officials from the Chinese embassy earlier this year.

The Chinese officials breached security at a base in Virginia this autumn, and only stopped driving after their path was blocked by fire trucks – at which point they claimed to have been lost.

But security officials said one of the two Chinese officials was believed to be an intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover. Their expulsion marks the first accusation of spying against a Chinese embassy official since the Cold War.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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