The Trump administration has not yet released the text of the phase one trade deal with China set to be signed at the White House on Wednesday.
Various administration officials have described portions of the deal but the actual text has been kept confidential. Last month, administration officials said that the text of the deal would be made public once the official translations had been finalized. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said this weekend the translation was complete.
“The text will be released tomorrow, showing the structural reforms and enforceability of the agreement,” a White House spokesperson told the Hill. “The truth is the President has protected the American worker and fundamentally changed our relationship with China.”
The release of the text of the deal is considered crucially important by economic nationalists and China hawks in the U.S.
“We’ve only seen a one-page fact sheet from the U.S. trade representative, but [President Trump’s trade adviser] Peter Navarro told Fox Business that it’s an 86-page agreement,” Gordon Chang said in an interview with Breitbart News Tonight host Rebecca Mansour. “We also know that the Chinese translation has not yet been finalized, which is important if it has equal dignity with the English text. So this is not a big deal if the agreement is only going to be in English, but it’s pretty unlikely that the Chinese would accept that arrangement.”
One of the sticking points that led to the collapse of trade talks last year was China’s insistence that the text of the deal be kept secret.