A Year On, China Falls Short on Trade-Deal Targets

01/15/2021

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Yuka Hayashi | WSJ

WASHINGTON—The U.S.-China trade pact signed a year ago is being credited for improving business conditions for some American companies, even if a cornerstone of the deal—China’s commitment to greatly increase purchases of U.S. goods—has fallen short.

Under the deal brokered by the Trump administration, China agreed to purchase about $159 billion in U.S. goods by the end of 2020. Through November, China’s actual purchases were about $82 billion, or about 52% of the target goal, according to an analysis by Chad Bown, a senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Economists have attributed the shortfall in part to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which dented Chinese domestic demand for foreign goods and lowered the prices of imported energy.

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