US-China initial trade deal 'totally done', Lighthizer says

A trade deal that will almost double US exports to China over two years is "totally done", the US trade representative has said.

The agreement, announced on Friday, will cut some US tariffs on Chinese goods in return for higher Chinese purchases of US goods totalling $200bn (£150bn) in the next two years. The "phase one" deal shows some progress from acrimonious talks over more than two and a half years between the world's biggest economies.

China will buy more US agricultural, manufactured and energy products and has promised to give greater protection to US intellectual property, open its financial services market to US companies and eschew currency manipulation.

Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative, told the Face the Nation TV show there would be some routine revisions to the deal text but that "this is totally done, absolutely".

President Donald Trump's trade war with China has unnerved global markets and suppressed business investment. In exchange for China's concessions the US has agreed not to go ahead with tariff increases on $156bn of Chinese consumer goods and to cut tariffs to 7.5% from 15% on $120bn of imports.

The agreement leaves lots of work still to be done to ease trade barriers between the two countries but is a move to ease tensions stoked by Trump's pledge to get a better deal for the US. Trump's critics have accused him of reviving protectionism that will harm US workers and the global economy.

Freya Beamish, chief Asia economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said China's concessions were not as great as they appeared because it had already turned away from currency manipulation and was less keen on intellectual property theft.

"These were very low-hanging fruit. China essentially was going to do most of these things in any case," Beamish said. "The Chinese side, however, appears to have cottoned on to the fact that Mr Trump doesn't want to raise tariffs any further and so has bargained for … concessions from the US side in the form of a partial rollback of previous tariffs."

Facing impeachment efforts in congress and with a presidential election looming in 2020, Trump needs to keep the US economy growing. Lighthizer said progress had been made on trade but added: "There are a lot of hard things left over … I'm not Pollyanna."