With the ongoing saga of the US-China trade talks toing and froing, on what seems at times an hourly basis, Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce, has described the negotiating stage right now as in the ‘fine-tuning’ stage. Ross told Fox Business that: ‘Clearly, we think there's some hope. We are optimistic we can get something done’, adding that with regards to the negotiations, Trump ‘means what he says and he says what he means’. However, the comments do follow on from Trump’s statements earlier in the week when he said he was ‘OK either way’ if a deal did or didn’t come together. He told a cabinet meeting that ‘China's got to make a deal that I like if they don't, that's it’.
It looks as though a deal that was nearly signed 6 months ago is being used as the basis for what will happen now. According to some, the first phase of that deal was, in theory, a limited agreement that allowed both leaders to claim an easy victory to the outside world as well as smoothing financial markets. However, it now looks as if it has morphed into something considerably bigger.
Just to complicate matters further, we now have the ongoing situation in Hong Kong thrown into the mix. In contrast to Trump’s (up to now) muted responses to the demonstrations, yesterday the Senate unanimously passed a bill, directly aimed to support the protesters in Hong Kong, whilst warning China against any violent suppression of the demonstrations. What the bill means is that legislation would require annual reviews of the city's favourable trade status. China immediately threatened to retaliate if the bill takes effect, whilst it has been called unnecessary by some.
Finally, last night we had the first live TV election debate of the campaign where Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson went head-to-head. Unsurprisingly, both men kept to their own chosen script, Johnson urged the public to vote Conservative and ‘get Brexit done’, whilst Corbyn attacked current levels of spending on the NHS and telling the Prime Minister ‘You are going to sell our National Health Service out to the United States and Big Pharma’. Those in the know seemed to think that both men were evenly matched, so called it a score draw. Maybe of more interest was the news that Nigel Farage, the Brexit Party leader, is considering pulling campaigners from key marginal seats to help the Tories. He said there were ‘ongoing conversations’ between the two parties about standing ‘paper candidates’ in key swing seats.