(3 February 2020) Last Wednesday (15 January), China and the United States signed 'phase one' of their bilateral trade deal to halt an immediate further escalation in tariffs by either country. Phase 1 does nothing to relax the tariffs imposed over the last couple of years to the detriment of global growth.
So, what does the Phase 1 deal promise for 2020? We expect trade uncertainty will continue weighing on global economic growth in 2020 as it has throughout 2019 but that the cost of the US-China trade war itself in terms of the global economy will be lower. Under the phase one agreement, China will purchase $200 billion worth of agricultural products and other commodities from the United States within the next two years, which is some relief. In exchange, Washington canceled a planned tax increase on Chinese goods, initially scheduled for December 2019, but will continue to enforce inflated tariffs on many Chinese goods.
(October 2019) China and the United States reached a partial trade deal on Friday, October 11, with the US agreeing to forgo further tariff escalation in exchange for China agreeing to resume purchases of US farm products. However, even if trade terms improve between the countries, recent preliminary figures released by China's customs office suggest Chinese exports hurt by the trade war will need time to recover to 2018 levels. Since the beginning of 2019, China exported $348 billion to the United States, 11.3 percent less than during the same period of 2018.China's exports...
Recent analysis from the IMF cites increasing uncertainty caused by trade tensions as a primary driver of sluggish global growth, a trend which moved the IMF to issue a downward revision to its global GDP growth forecast in the July edition of the World Economic Outlook. According to IMF estimates, the escalation of trade uncertainty observed this year could consume around 0.75 percentage points of global growth in 2019. To track trade tensions globally, the IMF and Stanford University teamed up to develop the World Trade Uncertainty Index (WTU).* This index measures trade...
Ask any American soybean farmer about current market conditions and US-China trade frictions will bubble up in the conversation. After the late June meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Osaka, Trump assured American farmers that trade talks would resume and that China would buy a tremendous amount of food and agricultural products very soon. Yet, in the month since, no significant purchases have been announced and no information is publicly available on large purchases in the offing, especially now, as the trade-war escalated again with the new 10-percent...
Weeks after US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a temporary halt in the US-China trade war, the first positive signs of a return to normal trade relations are emerging. Last week, the China Grain Reserves Corporation (Sinograin) and fellow state-run Chinese enterprise Cofco bought more than 1.5 million tons of US soybeans, the first significant deal since the countries agreed to a 90-day truce from December 1, 2018, to March 1, 2019. The announcement caused a spike in soybean futures to $918.5 a bushel, the highest price since June. Soybeans were...
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