WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - The diplomatic cable from Beijing arrived in Washington late on Friday night, with systematic edits to a nearly 150-page draft trade agreement that would blow up months of negotiations between the world’s two largest economies, according to three U.S. government sources and three private sector sources briefed on the talks.
The document was riddled with reversals by China that undermined core U.S. demands, the sources told Reuters.
In each of the seven chapters of the draft trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war: Theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation.
U.S. President Donald Trump responded in a tweet on Sunday vowing to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent on Friday – timed to land in the middle of a scheduled visit by China’s Vice Premier Liu He to Washington to continue trade talks.
According to China, the US has promised to keep on reducing tariffs and eventually move to a no-tariff environment. Should the US attempt to cheat and weasel its way out of its obligations, then China can enforce the agreement by immediately punishing the US by stopping all buys of Agricultural products immediately as well as reimposing tariffs on the US.
As we all know, the US government is famous for cheating and weaseling its way out of any agreement it has made. Usually the cheating and weaseling starts even before both parties have returned to their respective countries.
In this case, the US trade officials have pathetically spun this obvious trade war loss into a victory to gain support from their political supporters. Actually it is a massive loss. The trade deficit has massively increased instead of reducing, and nothing has changed from the original positions of both countries, except that US farmers will eventually lose their customers in China. Even the fantasy massive buys China is supposed to make from US farmers will only actualize if the US govt keeps its agreement to eventually reduce all tariffs to zero, which it can never do, since cheating and weaseling is part of its normal operation. So nobody really expects China to make those buys, just like nobody expects the US to keep to its agreement.
I notice weasel-man Peter Navarro is saying they can enforce the agreement by immediately putting tariffs on China and "China has promised not to retaliate."
Yes, and Liu He will get a team of chinese acrobats to give you a big kiss also.
Is this weasel-man naive or just stupid? When he talks like that, it really shows his self-delusion. I guess those 3 years in Thailand where he was probably tricked into dangerous and unwholesome activities with transvestites haven't really taught him anything expect foolish racism, hatred and bigotry.
It certainly did not make him more intelligent.
If all Trump's officials are as dumb and delusional as Navarro, then the US is finished, and nobody can arrest its decline.
The US govt is probably the only govt in the world that can have its military bases openly bombed by ballistic missiles, then swallow it and say, we have made our troops safer. This really is setting a new high benchmark in amazing self-delusion and sheer stupidity.
