China-US Trade Deal Opinion: Trump's trade deal with China ignores the big picture (and is self-serving re: impeachment) - by Lindsay Gorman

By many counts, the trade deal President Trump signed on Wednesday with China lacks heft. It doesn’t remove all the tariffs, it doesn’t impose any major penalties on intellectual property theft, and it punts completely on issues including China’s state subsidies to prop up its own companies in international markets.

Yet on one matter, the agreement could dramatically alter the U.S.-China relationship and the future of global democracy.

China isn’t any nation. It’s a high-tech superpower deeply embedded in the global economy. And as documented extensively by a variety of organizations including Freedom House and Human Rights Watch, China’s authoritarian government exploits economic ties and uses the technology it develops and acquires to control its own population and to extend its power abroad.

Some 63 countries and counting have bought Chinese-made artificial intelligence surveillance equipment. This technology has been deployed by the Chinese government to control the Uighurs through a sophisticated network of facial recognition cameras, GPS trackers, DNA checkpoints, and online-behavior monitoring on a 24-hour basis.

Outside of Xinjiang, 200 million cameras watch China’s population. In some schools, children wear GPS and facial-recognition-enabled uniforms designed to keep them in line. And beyond China’s borders, its companies sell tracking and monitoring set-ups to authoritarian police forces worldwide. With these purchases comes training on how to identify threats by studying the walking gait of an individual in a series of video camera frames, or through “public opinion guidance,” which uses artificial intelligence to monitor citizens’ speech. In short, this is the technological grounding for 21st century authoritarianism.

Unfortunately, China’s own actions make a return to the post-trade-war status quo unlikely. In addition to its high-tech-driven human rights abuses, Beijing is actively working to undermine democracies worldwide using social media disinformation campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as through state-funded traditional media beyond the Chinese-speaking world.

The new trade agreement will not resolve strains in the U.S.-China relationship — nor should it. This tension is grounded in the profound ideological differences between democracy and the Chinese Communist Party’s model of repression that it is disseminating around the world. If the United States treats this trade truce as a reset for the broader relationship, it would be tacitly accepting China’s abuses and its efforts to promote their spread.

Note EU-Digest: let us also not forget that Trump in order to distract public attention from his own troubles re: impeachment, is using  every avenue at his disposal to shore-up his popularity and that includes this very nebulous trade agreement with the Chinese.

Read more: Opinion: Trump's trade deal with China ignores the big picture - Los Angeles Times

China - US Relations: 'Tariffs are a beautiful thing' — Trump doubles down on his trade war strategy with China after Mexico deal

President Donald Trump called into CNBC on Monday to make it clear that he is not backing off his tariff strategy in dealing with China and other countries, apparently energized days after he announced a border security deal with Mexico.

"People haven't used tariffs, but tariffs are a beautiful thing when you are the piggy bank, when you have all the money, everyone is trying to get our money," Trump said during an impromptu phone interview on  "Squawk Box."

Trump said his threat to impose tariffs on Mexico encouraged the country to agree to stronger immigration enforcement, and predicted that the strategy would be successful with China as well.

Read more: 'Tariffs are a beautiful thing' — Trump doubles down on his trade war strategy with China after Mexico deal

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China-EU Trade Relations: Wary of Trump, China launches EU charm offensive: by Robin Emmott and Ben Blanchard

China has launched a charm offensive with the European Union since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, shifting its stance on trade negotiations and signaling closer cooperation on a range of other issues, European diplomats say.

European envoys in Brussels and Beijing sense a greater urgency from China to find allies willing to stand up for globalization amid fears Trump could undermine it with his protectionist "America First" policies.

"Trump is pushing China and Europe together," said one Beijing-based diplomat, citing Chinese support for trade, combating climate change and the United Nations, all areas where the new U.S. president is seeking a change of tack.

Four senior EU diplomats and officials in close contact with the Chinese told Reuters they also see a chance for a breakthrough on business issues that have been moving slowly for years, including a special treaty to increase investment flows.

EU business groups are more skeptical, expressing growing dissatisfaction, like their U.S. counterparts, with limited market access in China and pressing for a firmer response.

Note EU-Digest: It seems President Trump is starting to feel the heat of the fact that it is possible two of the largest Global Economies could be ganging up against the US and as a result recently invited the President of China for a weekend of talks at what Trump calls  "the Southern White House" in Palm Beach Florida. 

Read more: Wary of Trump, China launches EU charm offensive: diplomats | Reuters

EU in Latin America trade push – by Iana Dreyer of EurActiv

On 11 March, the EU and Cuba finalised negotiations towards a Political Cooperation and Dialogue Agreement, ending more than a decade of political ostracism for the Caribbean state.

Negotiations long believed dead between the European bloc and Mercosur are about to be revived, the planned launch of a modernisation process for a fifteen year old agreement with Mexico is generally considered a matter of months, if not weeks away, and a similar move is in the pipeline with Chile.

The EU-Cuba agreement is “historic”, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said. The deal “opens a legal framework for our economic cooperation, policy dialogues, but also much more than that. It opens up perspectives for major engagements for all”. The EU has also taken the opportunity to call on the US to end its trade embargo on Cuba, which has extra-territorial reach, and thus harms EU businesses. “I also publicly raised the issue [when in Havana on 11 March]. The embargo policy of the US is outdated,”  Mogherini said.

The EU’s High Representative was in Argentina a few days before her trip to Cuba, and made it official in Buenos Aires that a deal with the South Americans was on its way, with an exchange of tariff offers expected for April this year.

“What I see in Mercosur today is a very strong commitment to exchange offers and start negotiations for real.

And I think this is a political opportunity that we cannot miss,” Mogherini said. There is also a “clear recognition that the exchange of offers is a starting point for negotiations, a basis for potential improvements”, she said, adding that the EU needs to “start negotiations immediately before the window closes”.

Federica Mogherini set out the EU’s expectations with the coming trade negotiations with Chile and Mexico. The coming upgrade should end up with deals that are “comparable to CETA with Canada and TTIP with United States”, she said.

Chile’s Ambassador to the European Union, Carlos Appelgren, said that the results of the country’s 2003 FTA with the EU “have been extraordinarily successful. Bilateral trade has increased by a rate of 9% per year, growing from $7 billion in 2002 to more than $21 billion in 2014”, Appelgren stressed.

The Chilean envoy noted that since 2013, the European Union had posted a trade surplus with Chile. EU foreign direct investment is dominant in Chile, accounting for 34 percent of FDI stocks in the Andean country, and is focused on mining, services and infrastructure.

For the coming negotiations, the ambassador cited “liberalisation of remaining tariff barriers, covering 2 percent [of tariff lines]”, public procurement, sustainable development, the gender dimension of trade, and services as Santiago’s priorities. He said there are plans for a “robust agreement on investment to overcome the fifteen BITs” Chile has signed with individual EU member states. Santiago also aims to simplify rules of origin, tackle non-tariff barriers to trade, trade defence and competition.

Mexican Ambassador to the EU, Cesar Guera, said that the modernisation of the commercial pillar of the EU-Mexico Association Agreement of 200/2001 would include, “among other topics: liberalisation of agriculture goods, reform of rules of origin, with special focus on cumulation with common [FTA] partners, and seek to increase transparency and cooperation in sanitary and phytosanitary [issues]”.

In services, the goal would be to lock in recent Mexican reforms in telecommunications, finance and energy. Guera also said the deal should aim to protect investments “to the highest standards, taking into account the new focus of the EU on the topic”, in reference to the European Union’s investment court proposal to replace investment arbitration to settle disputes between investors and host states.

“Mexico hopes to start shortly with the broad and ambitious modernisation of the agreement with the EU. Both sides are highly prepared to take that important step.”

Mexico and Chile are parties to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Asia-Pacific trade agreement clinched in 2015 under US aegis. Mexico, a member of NAFTA, is also seeking to upgrade its relationship with the EU after TTIP and the recently concluded CETA, agreements which could harm Mexico if no complementary measures are taken.

The EU concluded FTAs with Peru and Colombia in 2012/2013, and is finalising the inclusion of  Ecuador into the Peru/Colombia deal.

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US trade deal may be a lot for Europeans to swallow - by Doug Palmer and Robin Emmott

Can Europeans, who have balked for years at many US food imports, accept a free trade agreement with the US that opens the door for imports of genetically modified crops and chickens cleaned with chlorine? 

That is one of the big questions facing policymakers as the transatlantic trading partners, both hoping to boost exports to help their struggling economies, consider launching talks in 2013 on a free trade pact. 

The US and the 27 member states of the EU already have the largest economic relationship in the world – and one of the most complicated. 

Two-way goods trade totals more than $600 billion (R5.2bn) annually. Services trade, including sales by majority-owned US or EU companies in each other’s market, adds about $1.2 trillion. 

Meanwhile, US and EU business groups are gearing up for what they hope will be a quick negotiation that reaches a deal before European Commission President José Manuel Barroso finishes his second term in 2014. 

European companies have their own concerns, including US security rules that require them to give two days’ notice before flying to the US and complex visa and customs declarations that they see as non-tariff barriers that slow down and complicate transatlantic business. In other sectors, such as pharmaceuticals, reducing regulatory barriers across the Atlantic could cut costs. 

“We could save a lot of money by harmonising packaging for both the US and the EU,” a senior German pharmaceuticals executive said. 

US ambassador to the EU William Kennard told business leaders last week: “I think the stars may be aligned now in way that they have not been aligned in the past. If we’re smart we can seize this opportunity.”

Note EU-Digest: hopefully EU negotiators will not be "bamboozled" by US multi-national corporate games in these negotiatios.

Read more: US trade deal may be a lot for Europeans to swallow - Business News | IOL Business | IOL.co.za