BEIJING: President Donald Trump can return to the United States claiming to have snagged over US$250 billion in deals from his maiden trip to Beijing. Automakers Ford Motor Co and General Motors must operate through joint ventures, while Hollywood movies face a strict quota system.PUMP IT UPAs is often the case during state visits, many of the deals were packaged as ”non-binding” agreements, gave scant details or rolled over existing tie-ups, helping pump up the headline figure.Qualcomm signed non-binding deals worth US$12 billion with Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo, three Chinese handset makers the firm said it had ”longstanding relationships” with. Qualcomm already earns more than half of its revenues in China.Boeing signed US$37 billion in commercial deals, although initial details were scarce.“Interesting to see how many of those are past agreements/purchase orders repackaged. Beijing is a master of selling the same agreement 10 times,” former Mexican ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo posted on Twitter.Trump did, however, press Xi hard on improving the trade balance between the two countries on Thursday.“The United States has to change its policies because they have gotten so far behind on trade with China and frankly with many other countries,” he told reporters, adding previous USadministrations had allowed it to get ”out of kilter”.“We have to fix this,” he said.Asked whether the big package of deals would go some way towards helping fix American trade concerns in China, executives were cautiously optimistic.“Generally, the sense was that this is all a good thing, and that’s great,” said Gentry Sayad, a Shanghai-based lawyer who took part in the delegation in Beijing. ”Now let’s see what really happens.” - Reuters

Source: The Star November 09, 2017 06:33 UTC