US, China May Find Only ‘Tactical Floor,’ Ex-Trade Official Says

Any US-China trade agreement could provide temporary relief to bilateral tensions but won’t change the trajectory of the world fragmenting into separate blocs, a former top US trade official said.

“A US-China deal, whatever it is ... will be at best setting a tactical floor for the moment,” said Charlene Barshefsky, who was the United States Trade Representative in the 1990s under former President Bill Clinton. “Strategically, it will not impact, I don’t believe, either the direction that China is going in or the direction the US is going in,” she said at the Bund Summit in Shanghai on Saturday.