It was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, one of Europe’s diplomatic masterminds and a survivor of the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall, who stated: “Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” Talleyrand would have enjoyed the pomp and ceremony surrounding the signing of the Phase One trade deal between China and the United States at the White House on January 15, 2020. There were a lot of speeches, but the decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies is still in motion; Phase One is a truce in a much longer struggle for global mastery between the world’s two major powers, the United States and China. There are serious questions as to whether Phase Two will ever be negotiated to the satisfaction of either party. And it is likely that both President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, know this.
At the White House ceremony, Trump said that “together we are righting the wrongs of the past and delivering a future of economic justice and security. For behind even this deal, it is going to lead to an even stronger world peace.” For their part, Chinese officials painted the Phase One deal as a “win-win” solution. According to China’s Vice Premier Liu He, who signed the deal on behalf of China, the agreement was rooted in “equality and mutual respect”.