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Trump to dispatch Mnuchin, Lighthizer to China for next round
Two sides cite progress, stop short of announcing breakthrough
China promised to “substantially” expand purchases of U.S. goods after the latest round of trade talks, and both sides planned further discussions to reach a breakthrough with only a month to go before the Trump administration is set to ratchet up tariffs.
President Donald Trump said Thursday he will dispatch two of his top negotiators to China following two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will visit the Asian nation in mid-February to hold the next round of talks.
The two sides made important progress during talks that were candid, specific, and fruitful, according to a statement published by China’s Xinhua News Agency on Friday. China agreed to increase imports of U.S. agriculture, energy, industrial products and services, it said, without providing details. The countries also agreed to strengthen cooperation on intellecual property rights and technology transfer, Xinhua said.
In a statement, the White House didn’t list any new commitments by either side, saying only that progress had been made and “much work remains to be done.” The White House reiterated its threat to raise tariffs by March 1, unless a “satisfactory outcome” is reached.
Trump also raised the possibility of a face-to-face meeting with Xi Jinping after receiving an official invitation from the Chinese leader. Earlier, he tweeted that “no final deal will be made until my friend President Xi, and I, meet in the near future.” One possibility would be for a meeting with Xi after the U.S. president’s planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February.
The teams have made “tremendous progress” but that “doesn’t mean we have a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. China has agreed to buy a substantial amount of American soybeans, the president added, calling the offer a sign of good faith.
The agreement to continue talking raises hopes the world’s two biggest economies could find a way to end the conflict before March 1, when the U.S. has said it may more than double tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods. But there was little concrete evidence they bridged yawning differences over the toughest issues such as China’s policy on intellectual property and the heavy involvement of the state in its economy.
Lighthizer told reporters on Thursday that the two sides had engaged in an intense and detailed discussion focused largely on U.S. demands for Chinese structural reforms this week. He conceded, however, that the two sides were only just starting to draft a common negotiating document, a sign of just how much work remained on nailing down the substance.
He said that the U.S. and China were still working on just what form a final deal would take, but that it would not be going to Congress for a vote. One possibility would be for the two sides to issue a memorandum of understanding, raising questions over how enduring such a deal would be and whether it would last into another administration. China has in the past walked away from similar MOUs after a period of time.
The U.S. is insisting that any deal should be enforceable and Lighthizer called that idea “foundational” on Thursday. But people familiar with the discussions say the U.S. side itself has yet to agree internally on what the right mechanism to enforce any agreement would be.
While the Chinese have signaled their willingness to have a deal be enforceable, they have been toying with ideas such as having independent arbitration tribunals that the U.S. is unlikely to accept, one person familiar with the negotiations said.
Deal Skeptics
Some in the U.S. business community remain wary of a quick deal which they fear could leave some of the knottier issues in the economic relationship unresolved.
Myron Brilliant, executive vice president and head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said while progress had been made this week the reality was that a lot of hard work remained. “We’re at halftime of the Super Bowl of trade relations,” Brilliant told reporters on a conference call.
The slow pace of talks and mountain of issues remaining to be agreed sets up what could be a tense countdown to the March 1 deadline, with a personal meeting between Trump and Xi looming as perhaps the only way to bridge some gaps.
“The statement certainly signals progress, but at best limited progress on the core long-term structural issues that separate the two sides,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University. “The statement ends with a not-so-veiled threat that China will need to offer more substantive concessions to enable a deal that would take further tariffs off the table.”
Lighthizer led the two days of negotiations in Washington with Liu, the highest-level talks since Trump met Xi on Dec. 1 and declared a 90-day trade truce.
Liu said that China hopes to accelerate that timetable. But it will likely take a meeting of the presidents to break the deadlock, said Derek Scissors, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute. He said a Trump-Xi summit “is, as it has always been, the main event.”
— With assistance by Jenny Leonard, Ye Xie, Mark Niquette, and Jeff Black
The U.S trade deficit with its global partners fell in November for the first time after five straight months of increases as the shortfall with China and several other countries declined.
Tightening the balance between imports and exports has been a major goal of the Trump administration, which last year started levying tariffs in an effort to close the gap.
A release from the government Wednesday showed the gap had closed in November, the most recent month for which data was available, to $49.3 billion from $55.7 billion in October, representing an 11.5 percent decline. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a deficit of $54.3 billion.
The decline was largely due to a slide in imports, which fell 2.9 percent to $259.2 billion. Exports edged lower to $209.9 billion, a 0.6 percent drop.
In all, the year-to-date goods and services deficit increased by $51.9 billion, a 10.4 percent rise from the same period in 2017. Exports rose $157.1 billion or 7.3 percent, while imports gained $208.9 billion or 7.9 percent.
On a broader level, the drop in the trade deficit will serve as a boost to fourth-quarter GDP, which is expected to show a 2.5 percent increase, according to CNBC’s Rapid Update tracker as well as the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow measure.
How the trade tensions play out over a longer period, though, is unknown as the U.S-China talks continue ahead of a March 2 deadline for imposition of another round of tariffs.
“America’s trade fight with the world has finally started to slow global trade and only time will tell whether this is a good thing for the economy in the long run,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, said in anote.
Among individual countries, the gap with China closed $2.8 billion to $35.4 billion.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC in an interview Wednesday that trade talks have been “very productive.”
The U.S trade deficit with its global partners fell in November for the first time after five straight months of increases as the shortfall with China and several other countries declined.
Tightening the balance between imports and exports has been a major goal of the Trump administration, which last year started levying tariffs in an effort to close the gap.
A release from the government Wednesday showed the gap had closed in November, the most recent month for which data was available, to $49.3 billion from $55.7 billion in October, representing an 11.5 percent decline. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a deficit of $54.3 billion.
The decline was largely due to a slide in imports, which fell 2.9 percent to $259.2 billion. Exports edged lower to $209.9 billion, a 0.6 percent drop.
In all, the year-to-date goods and services deficit increased by $51.9 billion, a 10.4 percent rise from the same period in 2017. Exports rose $157.1 billion or 7.3 percent, while imports gained $208.9 billion or 7.9 percent.
On a broader level, the drop in the trade deficit will serve as a boost to fourth-quarter GDP, which is expected to show a 2.5 percent increase, according to CNBC’s Rapid Update tracker as well as the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow measure.
How the trade tensions play out over a longer period, though, is unknown as the U.S-China talks continue ahead of a March 2 deadline for imposition of another round of tariffs.
“America’s trade fight with the world has finally started to slow global trade and only time will tell whether this is a good thing for the economy in the long run,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, said in anote.
Among individual countries, the gap with China closed $2.8 billion to $35.4 billion.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC in an interview Wednesday that trade talks have been “very productive.”
Together with partners, Covestro is investigating how recycling polyurethane plastics can be significantly improved. The materials manufacturer is part of the new Europe-wide research project called “PUReSmart”, which comprises nine companies and academic institutions from six countries. The goal is to develop a complete circular product life cycle and turn polyurethane into a truly sustainable material. One of the materials made of polyurethane is soft and hard foam, which is required for mattresses and upholstered furniture as well as for insulating buildings and cooling devices.
PUReSmart will run for four years and will receive six million euros from the European Union under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 814543). The project, coordinated by the Belgian company Recticel, aims to recover 90 percent of the used polyurethane in order to create building blocks for existing or new products – for example a new polymer that combines the durability of thermosets with the recyclability of thermoplastics. Intelligent sorting methods are particularly important for efficient chemical recycling.
Obtaining new high-quality raw materials
Covestro is working on the best possible chemical recycling of polyurethanes after use during the project along with the qualitative treatment of the material flows that are generated during this. The aim is to obtain high-quality raw materials for new polyurethane applications. “Polyurethanes are a particularly versatile and widely used class of plastics that provide comfort and safety in many applications worldwide and, as an insulating material, contribute to energy savings and thus to sustainability,” says Dr. Nikola Schuck, who heads Covestro’s contributions to PUReSmart. “Now it’s time to increase the sustainable value of the material at the end of its useful life.”
In addition to Covestro and Recticel, the companies BT-Wolfgang Binder (Austria), WeylChem InnoTec (Germany), Ecoinnovazione SRL (Italy) and Ayming (France) are involved in the PUReSmart consortium, which stands for a seamless and complete value-added chain in polyurethane reprocessing. Other academic partners are the University of Ghent (Belgium), KU Leuven (Belgium) and the Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha (Spain).
Together with partners, Covestro is investigating how recycling polyurethane plastics can be significantly improved. The materials manufacturer is part of the new Europe-wide research project called “PUReSmart”, which comprises nine companies and academic institutions from six countries. The goal is to develop a complete circular product life cycle and turn polyurethane into a truly sustainable material. One of the materials made of polyurethane is soft and hard foam, which is required for mattresses and upholstered furniture as well as for insulating buildings and cooling devices.
PUReSmart will run for four years and will receive six million euros from the European Union under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 814543). The project, coordinated by the Belgian company Recticel, aims to recover 90 percent of the used polyurethane in order to create building blocks for existing or new products – for example a new polymer that combines the durability of thermosets with the recyclability of thermoplastics. Intelligent sorting methods are particularly important for efficient chemical recycling.
Obtaining new high-quality raw materials
Covestro is working on the best possible chemical recycling of polyurethanes after use during the project along with the qualitative treatment of the material flows that are generated during this. The aim is to obtain high-quality raw materials for new polyurethane applications. “Polyurethanes are a particularly versatile and widely used class of plastics that provide comfort and safety in many applications worldwide and, as an insulating material, contribute to energy savings and thus to sustainability,” says Dr. Nikola Schuck, who heads Covestro’s contributions to PUReSmart. “Now it’s time to increase the sustainable value of the material at the end of its useful life.”
In addition to Covestro and Recticel, the companies BT-Wolfgang Binder (Austria), WeylChem InnoTec (Germany), Ecoinnovazione SRL (Italy) and Ayming (France) are involved in the PUReSmart consortium, which stands for a seamless and complete value-added chain in polyurethane reprocessing. Other academic partners are the University of Ghent (Belgium), KU Leuven (Belgium) and the Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha (Spain).
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