The WSCRC welcomes today’s announcement by the U.S. and Chinese Governments of a “Phase One” trade agreement between the two countries, putting a temporary pause to the trade war. The agreement covers issues that have been at the center of the trade negotiations, including intellectual property, forced technology transfer, agriculture, financial services and the currency and foreign exchange. Under this agreement, the U.S. would remove new tariffs on $156 billion of products that are scheduled to take effect this Sunday and would also reduce the tariff rate on roughly $120 billion of goods from 15% to 7.5%. China, in turn, would also remove tariffs and purchase agricultural products from the U.S., but the Chinese government has not yet disclosed the scale of the tariff reduction or purchase amount.
We believe the resumption of trade with China across many product categories will be beneficial to businesses in Washington state. We look forward to reviewing the details of the agreement and will comment further when they are available.