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Cracks appear in Trump’s claims of China trade agreement
By Damian Paletta ,
David J. Lynch and
Josh Dawsey December 4 at 9:43 PM
President Trump’s claims of a new trade agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping showed signs of crumbling Tuesday, with senior officials seeking to play down expectations of a breakthrough and acknowledging that major provisions remained in flux.
U.S. stock markets took a closer look at Trump’s claims of progress with China and promptly sank more than 3 percent as investors puzzled over competing U.S. and Chinese accounts of the outcome of the Group of 20 summit this weekend in Buenos Aires. The reversals more than erased the tepid gains Monday in reaction to Trump’s initial account of what he said were promises made by the Chinese government.
Three days after Trump emerged from his dinner with Xi touting an “incredible” deal, U.S. and Chinese officials were offering different accounts of whether there was a 90-day deadline for progress in new trade talks, the schedule for China to increase its purchases of American farm and industrial products, and Beijing’s plans to reduce or eliminate specific tariffs.
While Trump tweeted a day after the meeting that China would “reduce and remove” tariffs on U.S. automobiles, his aides acknowledged privately Tuesday that China had made no such commitment.
“Nobody knows what the deal is,” said one top White House adviser, who was among six administration officials interviewed for this story who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
“It doesn’t seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump’s tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality,” JPMorgan wrote in a trading note.
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“It doesn’t seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump’s tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality,”
That quote is NOT from "The Failing New York Times".
It is a trading note that JP Morgan emailed to their customers.