Agricultural News
Phase One Trade Deal With China to be Signed in Washington January 15th- So Tweets President Trump
Tue, 31 Dec 2019 15:00:09 CST
President Donald Trump has tweeted that the Phase One Trade Deal with China is complete and will be signed in the new year. His tweet reads "I will be signing our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China on January 15. The ceremony will take place at the White House. High level representatives of China will be present. At a later date I will be going to Beijing where talks will begin on Phase Two!"
The two sides announced earlier this month they had reached a preliminary agreement on a raft of issues including increased agricultural purchases by China, financial services market openings, forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection and currency manipulation.
The Phase One trade agreement between China and the U.S. has the two nations in "close contact" ahead of that January 15th signing. U.S. Chief Ag Negotiator Gregg Doud says the agreement between the world's two largest economies will mean big numbers of Chinese agricultural purchases of U.S. ag commodities. Doud says "China's purchase commitment is built upon a base year of $24 billion in ag purchases, which occurred in 2017. What China has agreed to do is buy an additional $32 billion over the next two years on top of that $24 billion mark."
Doud did acknowledge there are those people who say China's potential purchase levels will be hard to reach. However, he says that it doesn't take into account some of the new structural changes in the agreement. "China imported $124 billion in ag products last year from around the world," he says. "What we're asking China to do is to commit to $40 billion out of that $124 billion total." He thinks because of the structural changes in the deal, China will be more than able to accomplish that.
No specific details have been released by either Beijing or Washington at this point.
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