Coronavirus Undercutting US-China Trade Deal Targets

(Updated: 3 December 2020; Published: 19 June 2020) According to Phase One of the Economic and Trade Agreement between China and the United States, China committed to purchase no less than an additional $63.9 billion of covered goods from the United States by the end of 2020 relative to 2017 baselines. Depending on the baseline data used, China's purchases range from $142.7 billion (if US export data is used) to $172.7 billion (if Chinese import data is used). Based on these estimates, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) calculated monthly targets for China's imports from the United States.

• According to PIIE, for the period January-September 2020, Chinese imports from the United States were about $60 billion less than the purchase target, roughly a 45 percent deviation from the target.
• The largest deviation from target was from trade of energy goods. In the first nine months of 2020 China imported 3 times less from the United States than the target value.