BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — Three-digit tariffs are off the table, but import duties on each other are higher than in January.
Rare earth materials will flow more smoothly, but China has put in place an export permitting regime that it can tighten or loosen as needed.
Port fees will go away, but only for one year.
And Beijing is again buying
U.S. soybeans after it had abruptly cut off American farmers.
While
the meeting between the two leaders was hailed by Trump as a “roaring success,” the agreement that came out of it may only serve to undo some of the damages Trump inflicted with his trade war upon his return to the White House.
“It is hard to see what major gains the U.S. has made in the bilateral relationship relative to where things stood before Trump took office,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University.
On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday denounced the deal out of South Korea as leaving the U.S. as “no better off.”
“If anything, things are worse: Prices have gone up and China has agreed to nothing of substance that will improve trade between our nations,” the Democrat senator said, adding that Trump “started a trade war, created a giant mess for businesses, consumers, and soybean farmers, and then he celebrates for trying to clean up the very mess he created in the first place.”
