Stock markets across the world rose Monday after the United States and China agreed to a temporary truce in their trade war, negotiated over dinner in Argentina on Saturday.
Following the meeting, both sides proclaimed the meeting a success, with Trump pledging to pause the introduction of stricter trade measures ahead of further negotiations.
But the language used in the Trump administration’s announcement of the deal was very different to that in Chinese government statements, especially on Beijing’s promises to buy more US goods and the possibility of removing existing tariffs.
Even the 90-day deadline set by the Trump administration was nowhere to be found in Chinese media coverage.
Bonnie Glaser, director of the CSIS China Power Project in Washington, told CNN the disparity showed there was « a lot of room for misunderstanding » in the deal between Trump and Xi.
« I think that there’s still enormous uncertainty about what the outcome of these negotiations will be, » she said.
90 day deadline?
Before the meeting with Xi, Trump had set a January 1 deadline for increasing tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10% to 25%.
Although talks appear to have gone well, it wasn’t clear from the resulting statements whether Beijing realized Trump’s ultimatum wasn’t canceled — only postponed.
According to a readout from the White House, the two leaders agreed « that they will endeavor to have this transaction completed within the next 90 days. »
« If at the end of this period of time, the parties are unable to reach an agreement, the 10% tariffs will be raised to 25%, » the White House statement said.
