Trump administration officials are indicating that the trade agreement negotiated with Beijing earlier this month will likely require three stages of continuing negotiations to finish. The rhetorical shift — officials previously stated that they hoped to get it done in two — indicates that the talks are progressing slowly.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday that the administration is taking a “new approach” in the talks that involves addressing issues in a piecemeal fashion.
“Both sides are recognizing that it may not be necessary to do everything at once, so we will try to segment these issues going forward. What is not done in ‘phase one’ can spill over into a ‘phase two’ and conceivably a ‘phase three,'” he said in a speech at the North American Infrastructure Leadership Forum.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross indicated on Fox Business on Monday that a third phase was a certainty when asked about progress toward getting the first phase completed. “The real question is, do we get to an early signing of phase one? Second, how far do we get toward phase two or two and three? Two and three are really where the meat is,” Ross said.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business on Friday that the trade deal with China had a “strong enforcement mechanism in there that would serve on all three phases.”
President Trump announced a framework for a trade deal with Beijing on Oct. 11 that would require a two-phase process to be completed. The president and other administration officials said during the announcement that a third phase was also possible but that they were hoping to avoid that. “We think we’ll probably be able to conclude it with phase two, but it may be phase two, phase three,” Trump said.
In later public comments on the deal, Trump only mentioned two stages. In a cabinet meeting Monday, the president said, “Actually, the things in the second phase are, in many ways, a lot easier than the things in the first phase. So we’ll see how that goes.”
