WASHINGTON, JAN 1
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the US and China would sign a “very large and comprehensive” trade deal at the White House on January 15, though exact details of the agreement have not yet been released.
The signing would cement the first phase of an agreement that took nearly two years to negotiate and will formalise a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies. The president, who announced the date of the ceremony on Twitter, said that “high level representatives of China” would attend the signing ceremony and that he planned to travel to China “at a later date” to begin talks on the second phase of the agreement. Trump did not say whether Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, would be in attendance or name any representatives from China who might attend the ceremony. Text of the agreement, reached in mid-December, has not been made public and its exact contents have yet to be vetted by experts or the businesses that have suffered from the trade fight. The deal would reduce only a small portion of the tariffs Trump imposed on $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, leaving many levies in place. Courtesy: NYT
