Goldman Sachs feels that the rollback of tariffs is too low

After a host of tweets and headlines, the phase one deal with regard to trade between China and United States has been agreed upon finally. Though, Goldman Sachs is of the opinion that it may not be as rosy as it seems.

As part of this deal the United States has committed to maintain the tariff of 25% on close to $250 billion worth imports from China while it is going to reduce the tariffs on close to $120 billion products from China to an amount of 7.5%. This rollback in tariffs is a lot less than was expected as per the opinion of Jan Hatzius who is the chief economist of Goldman Sachs.

Hatzius has said that this reduction is just half as much as the assumption that they had made and there still exists some uncertainty with regard to this agreement’s status as it again appears that a few legal and technical details are in flux still.

Robert Lighthizer, the Trade Representative of the United States has said that these two nations are hoping to sign this agreement in January’s first week in the city of Washington. He has also put out a word of caution that the administration has not made any promises of the future rollback of tariffs and said that it would be better to be skeptical on whether the Chinese are going to deliver on their parts of the agreements.

He also in a statement said that the deal has addressed the key contentious issues of technology transfer, intellectual property and financial and agricultural services along with the foreign exchange and China has made a commitment to purchase more goods and services from US in the next few years.