There are hidden concerns in the optimism of the US -China talks

Source: Taiwan Economic Daily

Author: Liang Guoyuan

According to reports, U.S. Minister of Commerce Ross expressed his optimism with China to reach the first phase of trade agreement this month, and said that he will soon announce the list of exempted American companies, which can continue to do business with Huawei in China.However, there are a lot of books in these claims, such as exemptions to Huawei, which are still temporary permits, and emphasized that the exemption products must be based on the premise that the national security is not affected, so that the trade war still has hidden concerns in optimism.

In fact, it is different from the American Dow Jones Industrial Index and the MSCI emerging market index in the first time that President Trump announced that the first phase of the United States and China reached a phase of the first phase of the agreement.At the 3,000 -point mark, the price of the offshore RMB has also risen more than 300 basis points such as the market optimistic atmosphere, but international media and public opinion are relatively conservative.

Because of the core issue of the US -China trade war, the United States still believes that there is an unfair trade between the two parties.Hellip; and others.Because of this, in February this year, the US chief negotiator Littichizer said that the US -China trade negotiations need to change in structure, and the United States will not accept an incomplete agreement.

As for whether the latest first -stage protocol meets structural changes?On the surface, both the United States and China have a friendly response, but the agreement has not been signed by white paper and black words, and how to promote key structural issues is extremely unclear.Especially in China, China has conducted unfair competition through government large subsidy enterprises and structural problems such as technological transfer of American companies will be postponed to the second stage of treatment; trade in non -agricultural products has not further negotiated; the financial industry is open;Although the agreement is completed, the lack of details shows that this is a lack of comprehensive agreement.

In this case, why is the United States and China willing to take a third off -war battle for the third time?For Trump, the deadlock in the trade war dragging down the US economic growth will not help its re -election. As the Feds will continue to cut interest rates, Trump will be able to blame the economic slowdown on the Fed.In addition, China reduces the import of American agricultural products, hurts Trump's ticket warehouse, avoids the trade war to promote prices, affects the year -end festival consumption in the United States, and even eagerly puts topics from economic and political considerations such as impeachment cases and Ukraine incidents.

For China, in addition to the continuous extension of the anti -repair incident in Hong Kong, there are still problems such as economic growth rates that are not as good as expected, unemployed, and swine fever.The urgent urgent to help the Beijing authorities help the Beijing authorities in a timely manner to stabilize the overlapping economic and political level.

In other words, the so -called first -stage protocol was achieved when both countries were affected by the domestic economy and political pressure, and the technical transfer, industrial subsidy and other structural reforms to be discussed in the second and third hellip;It's really tricky.No wonder E. Prasad, director of the IMF China Research Center, believes that even if the agreement will suspend tariffs, it will not have much effect on solving the root cause of the friction between the two countries.

Looking back at the trade war, there have been two offspring of the United States and China. One was in Buenos Aires, Argentina in December last year, and the other in Osaka, Japan in June this year.But the former lasted only five months, and the latter was only one month.Although this agreement is relieved of short -term pressure on some countries or industries, it still cannot reverse the trend of economic and politics for the two major powers.Moreover, this agreement has not touched the tariffs that the two parties have been imposed on each other over the past 16 months, and the changes in the international production chain will continue to develop.Therefore, investors with high trade dependence countries and global layout must be prepared early.

(The author is the chairman of the Yuan Dabaohua Institute of Economic Research and Honorary Professor of the School of Science and Technology Management of National Tsinghua University)