(Reuters) - U.S. officials called on Monday for “concrete action” from China to make good on its commitment to purchase $200 billion in additional U.S. goods and services in 2020 and 2021 under the “Phase 1” trade deal signed by former President Donald Trump.
The officials said Washington was losing patience with Beijing, which had “not shown real signs” in recent months that it would close the gap in the two-year purchase commitments that expired at the end of 2021.
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The comments come a day before the U.S. government is due to release full-year trade data that analysts expect to show a significant shortfall in China’s pledge to increase purchases of U.S. farm and manufactured goods, energy and services.
Diplomats have a phrase to describe a counter-intuitive — but successful — foreign policy initiative: “It took Nixon to go to China.”
Few Americans realize, however, that when President Richard Nixon went to China in the spring of 1972, he was following a trail blazed by a Canadian prime minister. Pierre Trudeau had already broken the ice in Beijing. Canada was the first Western country since before the Korean War to recognize the regime that won power in 1949 as the rightful government of China.
Trudeau’s first visit to China was in 1949. He returned with Jacques Hébert in 1960 when the country was in the throes of the Great Leap Forward and got an interview with Mao Tse-tung for the influential Quebec-based political journal Cité Libre. In their book, Two Innocents in Red China, Trudeau and Hébert wrote that “it seemed to us imperative that the citizens of our democracy should know more about China.” Formal diplomatic recognition of Mao’s government was Trudeau’s top foreign policy priority when he became prime minister in 1968.
Oh, he and Fidel Castro*** were also good friends.
*** - You know, the guy that liberated his people from a brutal US supported dictator?
Then there is this somewhat amusing but complete nonsense that shows how really low some people can get.