U.S. and China reach an initial trade deal

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and China confirmed Friday they’d reached an initial trade deal, helping defuse tensions in a 19-month trade war and avoiding another round of punishing tariffs scheduled for this weekend.

If signed, the deal would increase Chinese purchases of U.S. farm and energy products, place limits on

Beijing’s ability to weaken its currency and provide greater protections to U.S. companies operating in China.

It also would reduce some of Trump’s tariffs, cutting levies on $120 billion worth of Chinese goods to 7.5 percent from 15 percent while keeping in place tariffs of 25 percent on $250 billion of products.

New tariffs slated for Sunday will be canceled as well.

But a trade deal that took nearly two years to reach and inflicted global economic damage in the process does little to resolve the United States’ biggest concerns about China’s trade practices, including its use of industrial subsidies and state-owned enterprises to dominate global industries like steel and solar panels.

Its main benefit may be to help Trump politically — allowing him to promote large gains to American farmers devastated by the trade war, calming anxious investors and convincing voters ahead of 2020 that he has lived up to his promise to get tough on China.

“It’s a phenomenal deal,” Trump said Friday at the White House.

Trump has pressured trading partners by threatening to scrap existing deals and imposing more tariffs than any other president in modern history. The United

States now has the highest tariff rate of any advanced nation, higher than even China, India and Turkey.

Whether that approach has achieved Trump’s goal of putting “America First” is an open question.

While many credit his tough tactics with bringing trading partners to the table, others say it has failed to produce bigger gains than those achieved through traditional trade negotiations and destabilized the global economy in the process.

The China deal was Trump’s second trade victory of the week, after Democrats agreed to support a revised North American Free Trade Agreement, moving it closer to becoming law.

Businesses welcomed the update of the 25-year trade pact, and tech companies in particular have praised the agreement’s strong protections for technology.