This Trade Deal Is a Band-Aid. And It’s as Good as It Gets
Billions of dollars of tariffs are still in place, and there’s no momentum toward a more conciliatory relationship.
This agreement doesn’t amount to much more than a hill of soybeans.
Photographer: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images
Don’t get too excited with that trade war relief rally. The current grim equilibrium — with tariffs weighing on around $465 billion of trade in each direction between the world’s two biggest economies — may be the best we see in a while.
The limited nature of the agreement between China and the U.S. is testament to that. Given the way that African swine fever has decimated China’s pork supplies, the touted doubling of agricultural imports to around $50 billion is simply bowing to economic and nutritional reality. Just returning to normal levels of soybean imports, which totaled $16 billion in the year through June 2017, would cover more than half of that gap.