The United States has launched an investigation into whether China is out of compliance with a 2020 trade deal they struck together, as trade tensions ratchet up between the world’s two largest economies.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the investigation on Friday, as President Donald Trump travels to Asia to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. China denies that it has failed to abide by the deal.
“China has scrupulously fulfilled its obligations in the Phase One Economic and Trade Agreement,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said in a social media post.
The probe into unfair trade practices could grant President Trump greater authority to impose more tariffs on China, which he has hit with massive trade duties during his second term in office.
“The administration seems to be looking for new sources of leverage to use against Beijing, while adding another pressure point to get China to buy more US soybeans as well as other goods,” Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator who is now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told The Associated Press news agency.
The “Phase One” deal came at the end of Trump’s first term in office in 2020, when the US imposed a series of tariffs on China in the name of bringing greater “balance” to their commercial exchange.
In that agreement, Beijing agreed to buy more US agricultural and manufacturing goods.
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