Is The Trump Trade War Over?

Probably not, but maybe.

The basic problem is that Trump has long wanted t beat up on other nations in a trade war, but now he is getting impeached and he needs positive news, and the stock markets like word that he is making trade deals. So now we get trade deals, but it is all sort of a mess.

So there are two matters here. One involves China, discussed in a new post here by pgl, which I shall comment on later. But my quick take on it is that he has made essentially similar proclamations in May, April, and even Dec. 2018. Sure, China will buy lots of US ag products and will respect intellectual property rights.  The number of times the la tter has been promised, I havelost count of.  As for the former, well, Trump is still trying to pay off his farmer losers with US taxpayer money.

So, the iiem not mentioned by pgl, although I konw he is konwledgeable on this, is the USMCA, or NAFTA++ whatever number.  The situation with this has become completely absurd. So on the day the House Judiciary comm called for impeachment of Trump, House Pseaker Pelosi came out for a modified version of Trump's USMCA.  Seveeral changes were made, incuding putting a limit on pharma price protections and a demand for Mexicans to allow union organizing. There were siine other minor changes frm the earlier versions. Anyway, it was enough for Pelosi o get the AFL-CIO to support it. She supported it.

So now McConnell and GOPs in the Senate do not support it. They do not like something because the AFL-CIO supports it?  Given that Trump wants this, I am really quite mystified.  I do not know what is going on here on this weird Senate oppo to this deal.

Just to review, this deal is mostly just the old NAFTA.  Some of it is an improvement; it needed an updating  Most of the changes in it were simply TPP items that both Canada and Mexico had previously agreed to.  This included most of the environmental and labor changes in the deal, but not a problem for Can and Mex.  Curiously one of the recently revised view by House Dems undoes part of the TPP deal, wich involved major protection for US pharma, with this being undone by the Pelosi/Hose Dems revision.  I am not clear id this  is the item that has McConnell upset or the matter of demanding that Mexico allow more union organizing.

As for the China matter, well, the new statement does not look all that much different from the May, April, and Dec. 18 stateements. Wow. We shall have China respecting US intellectual property rights and will buy lots  of US ag products.  Some tariffs will be reduced, but not many.  The big thing with the tariffs is not that some are being reduced, but that those that were supposed to come on Dec. 15 will not happen. Not much here, and the stock market yesterday barely moved.  Trump's ability to goose up the market with these nearly vacuous pronouncements seems to be coming to an end.

Barkley Rosser