After two days of talks, Trump's China trade deal is right back where it started

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

After almost 20 hours of marathon trade talks across two days, US and Chinese negotiators arrived back at the starting point they had brokered one month ago.
Given the fragility of US-China relations and the worldwide consequences of when they sour, any progress along the path of de-escalation is welcome.
But the key takeaway from Tuesday's incremental outcome is about as prosaic as the new agreement was underwhelming. Trade wars are easy to start, easy to escalate and extremely difficult to unpick, let alone win.
Holed up for two days in London's opulent Lancaster House, officials from both camps emerged late in the evening with what appears, at best, to be a Groundhog Day agreement to wind back the clock to the May 12 tariff ceasefire brokered in Geneva.
Unlike last time, there was no joint statement outlining the agreed terms, just a handful of remarks to reporters by the lead negotiators, where the main line of consensus appeared to be on what to call this bare-minimum breakthrough.
'The negotiators have negotiated a handshake agreement to seek sign-off to agree that a previously agreed agreement is still their agreed-upon agreement'
Justin Wolfers, US economist
'A framework' for implementing 'the Geneva consensus' is how both US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang referred to the end product of the protracted negotiations.
Under the Geneva truce, both sides agreed to scale back their eye-watering tariffs for 90 days – a deal that immediately wobbled when China continued to strangle the export of rare earth minerals and magnets, and the US retaliated with new curbs on semiconductor software and plane engine parts.
After the London discussions, there is no solid resolution on these issues, just an in-principle agreement to withdraw the knives.