Adjunct Professor Matt Gold shared his expert opinion in an article for Vox on the newly signed “phase one” trade deal between the United States and China and whether or not it will be a success.
After more than a year of negotiations, billions of dollars in tariffs, moments of intense escalation, and temporary detentes, the United States and China signed “phase one” of a trade deal.
President Donald Trump called it “a momentous step, one that has never been taken before with China, towards a future of fair and reciprocal trade.”
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“This is not success, this is Donald Trump’s theater of success,” Matt Gold, a professor in international trade law at Fordham University, told me. That doesn’t mean China and the US won’t talk, or at least make an effort at negotiating. Indeed, the US and China just announced they’re holding semiannual talks to discuss reform and disputes.
“Guess what?” Gold said. “We had that before Trump, and they were discontinued because of Trump. Almost everything Trump accomplishes is basically solving a problem that Trump created.”