President Trump Signs Off on Deal to Ease China Trade War

President Trump on Thursday approved a proposed U.S.-China trade deal, raising hopes for a possible truce in a 21-month commercial conflict that roiled financial markets, disrupted corporate supply chains and cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

At a White House meeting with his top trade advisers, the president signed off on a swap of U.S. tariff reductions in return for China spending $50 billion on U.S. farm goods, tightening its intellectual property protections and opening its financial services markets, according to Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the Hudson Institute, who says the president briefed him on the deal Thursday.

“It’s a breakthrough,” Pillsbury said. “He says it’s historic. I certainly agree with that.”

Plans for announcing the deal, including whether an official text will be made public, remain in flux. The administration has said it does not intend to seek congressional approval of the agreement.

“The deal is essentially done. The mechanics of how you execute it and how you get it signed still have to be worked out,” said one person briefed on the White House’s deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media.

Still, a so-called “phase one” agreement would leave the thorniest issues in the U.S.-China trade dispute to future negotiations, which are scheduled to begin next year. China’s massive subsidies for state enterprises and its practice of forcing foreign companies to surrender technology secrets in return for access to the Chinese market will be the subject of “phase two” of the talks.