Thread: Trump, China reach preliminary trade agreements on beef, poultry

Trump, China reach preliminary trade agreements on beef, poultry

By Damian Paletta and Simon Denyer
May 12 at 7:48 AM

Cattle await their fate at the 84 Auction in Eighty-Four, Pa., on Feb. 6. (Jeff Swensen for The Washington Post)

The Trump administration has reached new deals with China to ease market access for a variety of industries, including beef and financial services, as the White House makes progress on trying to soften economic barriers between the two sides.

The 10-part agreement, announced by Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, comes as part of an ongoing negotiation between the two countries following a meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.

“We have some very big news,” Ross told reporters Thursday. “U.S.-China relationships are now hitting a new high, especially in trade. We're announcing, jointly with the Chinese, the initial results of the 100-day action plan of the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.”

But experts were less impressed.

“China has made a few modest concessions that cost it very little, in areas strategically picked to maximize the political benefit to Trump,” said Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Gavekal Dragonomics, an economic research firm in Beijing. “But the substantive impact on US-China trade and investment flows is pretty minimal.”

The new arrangements include an agreement from China to allow imports of U.S. beef, on certain conditions, by July 16. The United States has pressured China for years to allow beef imports, but the process has been constantly delayed.

“It’s at least a $2.5 billion market that’s being opened up for U.S. beef,” Ross said.

Similarly, Washington has agreed to advance a new rule that would allow China to export cooked poultry to the United States. The impact of this change on the U.S. poultry industry is uncertain, but Ross said it would not be severe.

And there were numerous other parts of the preliminary agreement. This included language that appears to pave the way for U.S. firms to export liquid natural gas to China, the expediting of Chinese safety reviews for U.S. biotechnology applications, and cooperation between Chinese and U.S. regulators over financial transactions.

Other parts of the arrangement would direct China to issue bond underwriting and settlement licenses to “two qualified U.S. financial institutions” by July 17, a date that is significant because it comes 100 days after Trump and Xi met in Florida. And the United States has agreed to allow Chinese entrepreneurs to a Washington summit in June.

Trump spent months on the campaign trail berating China for its trade practices, but he has softened his approach since winning office. He has initiated reviews of China’s support of its steel and aluminum industries and its impact on U.S. trade, but the outcome of those reviews is unclear. He has shown a willingness to back away from trade-related threats after consulting with aides and foreign leaders, and he has recently heaped praise on Xi and what he perceives as China’s willingness to negotiate.

Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the HSBC Business School in Shenzhen in China, said Trump had created leverage with his “undiplomatic statements” on the campaign trail.

“However, the importance of this deals shouldn't be overstated,” he added. “These are largely long standing issues that China was either legally obligated to address or had every reason in its own incentives to address.

Nevertheless, Balding said the agreement could provide the basis for further cooperation and market opening agreements for American firms in China.

At a news conference in Beijing, China’s Vice Commerce Minister Yu Jianhua said the trade deficit between the two countries had been “overestimated” and was not a priority during this round of talks.

But he added China was open-minded about discussing it in further rounds, calling the U.S. government’s attitude “positive and pragmatic.”

“The wisdom and ability of the two countries to control differences and properly handle bilateral relations is beyond the imagination of many people,” Yu said.

In Washington, Ross said this announcement covered 10 items, but was a step in the right direction.

“As you can appreciate, this addresses 10 items,” Ross said of the initial agreements. “There are probably 500 items that you could potentially discuss; maybe more than 500.” Ross said they would continue working and then “see if we can reach agreement” on other matters.

Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.a00f1183328d

Personally, I wouldn't eat anything I knew was from China, especially meat. Furthermore, our consumption of beef already exceeds the amount we produce. So, what sense does it make to export our American grown beef? We're already the largest importers and consumers of beef in the world.

China Firm Buys Texas Oilfields For $1.3 Billion

China Just Became The No.1 Buyer Of U.S. Crude Oil

They built towering new cities in China. Now they're trying it in downtown L.A.



Rich foreigners use shell companies to buy up L.A. properties

Kushners Set to Get $400 Million From Chinese Firm on NYC Tower

The FDA kind of makes it hard to know what country our food comes from now, not allowing labels another cave in by our government. But I also don't buy any food from China or Taiwan when I know it is from these places. You can almost tell when you look at the so called fresh meat that is off color from being frozen and thawed several times during shipping 1000's of miles. I try not to buy any frozen meat anymore I would rather go without meat than eat the frozen rubbery beef and chicken that now has a yellow color in the stores still sold as fresh even if it is still half frozen.

I'm worried that the meat that makes it to our grocery store freezers bulk or carcasses is from Mexico or South and Central America. I quit eating it because it was giving me diarrhea. This was Northern California.

I once saw a Ralph's grocery store East of LA where nobody spoke English, just Spanish and the meat counters were really awful as were the frozen cases. Condensation everywhere, poorly lit and not very clean. Scary stuff.

I looked into this a bit and what I found was that the beef exports are mostly grain-fed high value cuts and the imports are grass fed low value cuts like ground beef. The highest country from which we import beef is Australia, 39%. Another large country we import beef from is New Zealand and another one is Argentina. Last year beef imports were down 10%.

China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order