<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Trump\u2019s ability to wangle a new deal from NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada will give the White House leverage to take a harder line in the escalating trade war with China, administration backers said Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the focus turns to China, where President Trump can resume his negotiations from a position of strength,\u201d said Chris Garcia, a former Commerce Department deputy director.<\/p>\n
He said Monday that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a blow to Beijing because it will create more hurdles for Chinese-made auto parts to enter the U.S. market and undercut Beijing\u2019s divide-and-conquer strategy.<\/p>\n
Trade analysts said a provision in the agreement dealing with currency manipulation gives Mr. Trump a template to attack Beijing for what critics say is a long pattern of driving down the yuan to benefit Chinese exporters.<\/p>\n
Although it\u2019s unclear when the next round of U.S.-Chinese trade talks will occur \u2014 Beijing halted negotiations last week after Mr. Trump ordered tariffs on a fresh $200 billion in Chinese imports \u2014 Mr. Trump clearly signaled that he is ready to play hardball.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a privilege for China to do business with us,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House while announcing the deal with Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina wants to talk very badly,\u201d said Mr. Trump, crediting his willingness to use tariffs and other measures to rebalance the trading relationship between the globe\u2019s two biggest economies. \u201cFrankly, it\u2019s too early to talk. Can\u2019t talk now because they\u2019re not ready, because they\u2019ve been ripping us for so many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some administration officials argued that the president now has momentum on his side as he ramps up talks with China and Japan on new trade deals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dominoes are falling, and it is good news for U.S. farmers,\u201d Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement.<\/p>\n
But some analysts predicted that, as tumultuous as the USMCA negotiations were over recent months, a breakthrough on trade with China is likely to be even more elusive.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, the China story is a lot more complicated,\u201d said Luis Costa, a top strategy analyst with Citibank.<\/p>\n
Mr. Costa argued in an interview on CNBC that the Trump administration\u2019s immediate goals for the trade talks with China are not entirely clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does the U.S. really want to achieve in the short term so we can finalize and mute the noise? We don\u2019t quite know,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I think that the story will probably be with us for years, not months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chinese officials had no immediate response to the Canada deal, and stock markets in Hong Kong and on the mainland were closed Monday. Other Asian stock markets were mixed as traders struggled to understand the deal.<\/p>\n
Complex problem<\/strong><\/p>\n China poses a problem of far greater magnitude and complexity for U.S. trade negotiators. In addition to breaking down traditional trade and tariff barriers, Washington is demanding changes to China\u2019s rules on such matters as technology-sharing and intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n Although Mr. Trump likes to highlight China\u2019s recent economic and financial woes, Chinese President Xi Jinping faces far fewer domestic pressures to cut a deal than do the democratically elected leaders of Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n The U.S. is China\u2019s largest single export market, taking in just under a fifth of all Chinese exports. The U.S. is the third-largest importer into China, trailing South Korea and Japan.<\/p>\n The planned U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, assuming the three countries ratify it, takes off the table any hopes China may have had of enlisting Mexico City and Ottawa in a broad alliance against Mr. Trump\u2019s trade agenda. The breakthrough over the weekend could strengthen Mr. Trump\u2019s hand by aligning the U.S., Mexico and Canada as three-way trade partners, with China on the outside looking in.<\/p>\n One area of the agreement that may have an immediate impact for China is the export of car and auto parts to the U.S. The agreement effectively caps imports from Canada and Mexico at 2.4 million vehicles and $90 billion worth of auto parts annually. Anything above that triggers a 25 percent tariff.<\/p>\n The agreement also requires 75 percent of the value of vehicles sold in the U.S. to be produced within the NAFTA market and stipulates that 40 percent to 45 percent of a vehicle\u2019s value be made in areas paying at least $16 an hour.<\/p>\n A report Monday by Investors Business Daily maintained that \u201cChina is a prime target of the new auto part restrictions\u201d that aim to \u201ccurb the use of components produced outside North America.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a major victory for the U.S. in re-orienting the supply chain away from Southeast Asia and back to North America \u2026,\u201d Mr. Garcia said. \u201cChina was using Mexico to game the system.\u201d<\/p>\n Other parts of the accord also appear to have China clearly in mind. Alexandre Moreau, a public policy analyst at the Montreal Economic Institute, pointed to a provision in the agreement that may effectively block Canada and Mexico from cutting their own bilateral trade deals with China and other major trading powers.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s something that really worries me,\u201d Mr. Moreau said in an interview on CNBC.<\/p>\n Others expressed hope that the USMCA will result in such a boon for North America that such concerns are irrelevant.<\/p>\n Mr. Garcia, the former U.S. Commerce Department official, argued in remarks circulated to reporters that the deal is \u201can effort to reorient the supply chain to North America.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe de-industrialization of the United States ended last night,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a major victory for the U.S. in re-orienting the supply chain away from Southeast Asia and back to North America.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Trump’s ability to wangle a new deal from NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada will give the White House leverage to take a harder line in the escalating trade war with China, administration bac President Trump\u2019s ability to wangle a new deal from NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada will give the White House leverage to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,316,8172,264,8173],"class_list":["post-17818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-business-finance","tag-china","tag-chris-garcia","tag-donald-trump","tag-nafta-partners-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}