China & US talks, page-13

From the AFR. The trade deal is bullshit. Key quote "it appears that an agreement is basically one to keep talking."

AFR: US-China trade deal is fake news, but financial markets won’t care

For a bloke who literally calls his social media posts “truths”, US President Donald Trump and his administration can be pretty fast and loose with the concept. Shortly after talks led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng concluded in Geneva on Sunday night, the White House rushed out a statement: “US announces trade deal in Geneva”. A possible trade deal between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump is still a long way off. The details revealed nothing of the sort, of course. Indeed, the statement quoted Bessent saying that the details of the outcome of the talks would not be released until Monday night. From what He told reports in Geneva, it appears that an agreement is basically one to keep talking. The two sides are set to announce some sort of mechanism to continue to hold further trade consultations. There’s no suggestion of a tariff pause as Trump has given to other countries. There’s no suggestion of a tariff reduction, even after Trump suggested on social media over the weekend that dropping the current 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods to 80 per cent “sounds right”. And there’s certainly no substantive trade deal as these things have been traditionally understood. Swallowing the spin But none of that will bother financial markets, which will be more than happy to swallow the White House spin and keep rolling with the powerful rally we’ve seen since April 8, when the market bottomed after Trump’s “liberation day” announcement on April 2.That rally appears to have been driven largely by retail investors and systematic trading. It has been built on nothing more than hopes that the economic damage from America’s effective trade embargo on China would eventually force the two countries to back down.