The G-20 meeting in the weekend could be the definitive moment for U.S. and China. (Image via: Reuters)

Mnuchin Believes U.S.-China Trade Deal is Almost Done

Steven Mnuchin announced that U.S. and China were close to the trade deal. He believes in the progress that both sides can achieve during the talk between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping. Donald Trump will meet Xi Jinping on Saturday at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Mnuchin is hopeful that they will receive good news, such as China will continue processing the deal. He said that it is important for the economy of U.S. and China. It will also affect the global economy and financial markets, which have been rattled by trade tensions between both countries for 18 months. The tariffs escalation on each other’s important becomes the factor as well.

The breakthrough of the negotiation has not reached yet. However, there’s a hope that the meeting will fix the situation between U.S. and China for the better. According to survey by Merrill Lynch, for about two-thirds of the investors expect no deal this weekend, but there would be no new tariffs either. The last G-20 meeting in December 2018 produces a truce of trade war, but everything broke down in May 2019. This happened because China didn’t want to change its laws about intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and currency manipulation. Those are the things that become concerns for the U.S.

The two countries keep giving punitive tariffs on each other in retaliation. Trump’s administration had increased tariffs on $200 billion for Chinese imports. It went from 10 to 25 percent. On the other side, China increased tariffs on thousands of American products worth about $60 billion. The International Monetary Fund lowered its global growth forecast for 2019 from 3.5 to 3.3 percent. They cited that the ongoing global trade tensions as the reason for the downgrade.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/mnuchin-says-us-china-trade-deal-was-90-percent-complete.html