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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Trump’s $250bn China ‘miracle’ adds gloss to ‘off-kilter’ trade

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BEIJING/SHANGHAI: President Donald Trump can return to the United States claiming to have snagged over $250 billion in deals from his maiden trip to Beijing. Whether those deals live up to the lofty price tag is another question altogether. Watched by Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at a signing ceremony in Beijing, US planemaker Boeing Co, General Electric Co and chip giant Qualcomm Inc sealed lucrative multi-billion dollar deals.


“This is truly a miracle,” China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said at a briefing in Beijing.


The quarter of a trillion dollar haul underscores how Trump is keen to be seen to address a trade deficit with the world’s second-largest economy that he has long railed against and called “shockingly high” on Thursday.


But US businesses still have many long-standing concerns to complain about, including unfettered access to the China market, cyber-security and the growing presence of China’s ruling Communist Party inside foreign firms.


William Zarit, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said the deals pointed to “a strong, vibrant bilateral economic relationship” between the two countries. “Yet we still need to focus on levelling the playing field, because US companies continue to be disadvantaged doing business in China.”


US tech companies like Facebook Inc and Google are mostly blocked in China. Automakers Ford Motor Co and General Motors must operate through joint ventures, while Hollywood movies face a strict quota system. “(These deals) allow Trump to portray himself as a master deal-maker, while distracting from a lack of progress on structural reforms to the bilateral trade relationship,” Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note.


Some huge deals were announced. Among them is a 20-year $83.7 billion investment by China Energy Investment Corp in shale gas developments and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia, a major energy producing state that voted heavily for Trump in the 2016 election. [


“The massive size of this energy undertaking and level of collaboration between our two countries is unprecedented,” West Virginia Secretary of Commerce H Wood Thrasher said in a statement.


It marks the first major overseas investment for the newly founded China Energy, which formed from the merger of China Shenhua Group, the country’s largest coal producer and China Guodian Corp, one of China’s top five utilities.


However, as is often the case during state visits, many of the deals were packaged as “non-binding” agreements, gave scant details or rolled over existing tie-ups, helping pump up the headline figure. — Reuters


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