Axios: “The Biden administration plans to review the phase one U.S.-China trade deal, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday. Based on publicly available data, it’s hard to imagine they’ll find anything other than a debacle. China isn’t even close to fulfilling its end of the deal – having come up 42% short of its commitment, Chad Bown, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, reported late last week.”
“The phase one deal was meant to be the Trump administration’s reward for U.S. farmers, manufacturers and other business owners who had been bludgeoned by Trump’s tax on American businesses via the trade war’s tariffs. The trade war was billed as a plan to bring China to its knees by choking off the all-important American market with 25% tariffs on many imports that would rein in the U.S. trade deficit, boost American exports and slow China’s rise as a global superpower. What really happened: ‘The trade war with China hurt the US economy and failed to achieve major policy goals,’ a recent study commissioned by the U.S.-China Business Council argues, finding that the trade war reduced economic growth and cost the U.S. 245,000 jobs.”