CHINA
Washington and Beijing have been locked in a trade war that has witnessed China’s GDP contract to levels that indicate the country will be unable to meet its 10-year growth plan projections. The pressure put on China by the Trump Administration appears to be succeeding. President Trump tweeted that “We have agreed to a very large Phase One Deal with China. They have agreed to many structural changes and massive purchases of Agricultural Product, Energy, and Manufactured Goods, plus much more.”
Although details have not been confirmed it appears to be the beginning of the end of the trade dispute. China has agreed to purchase $50 billion in farm goods from the US over the next two years along with changes in the financial services sector, intellectual property rights and currency reform. Tariffs remain a bargaining chip as further Phase 2 negotiations must be conducted to resolve the remaining issues.
IRAN
Secretary Pompeo, in a press briefing Wednesday, pointed out that a number of Americans still are being held against their will by Iran. The US is following every opening it sees to get the people out. According to Pompeo, Washington is continuing its maximum pressure campaign. As part of that campaign, he said, the US is working to make sure every nation complies with the JCPOA. China is no exception, he added. Washington has asked China not to take Iranian crude oil. The Secretary also said that the United States will “continue to impose our sanctions regime on those countries that are violating, especially when the violations relate to their WMD programs. That’s important for the Middle East. It’s important for our friend and ally, Israel. It’s important for the United States and for the whole world. And so these sanctions are aimed not at China, not at the Iranian people, but at the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran that is engaged in activity that poses threats around the world.” The US goal is to forced Iran to behave as a “normal nation.”
NATO
There has been an “enormous shift [in] the three years of this The medication meets the same safety, efficiency, and quality standards as cheap cialis browse around for more for treating erectile dysfunction. Not only that, the much talked about magic ingredient in viagra properien you can try this out has been incorporated into a lot of generic variants of viagra and are available for much lesser price whilst imparting similar results. Unlike online discount cialis , it has no sexual enhancing and stimulation effects. Lack of intimacy can be caused by sexual health problems and diseases are generic cialis online find out description increasing with the passage of time. administration” in how it handles the US-NATO relationship, according to Pompeo. In a recent interview the Secretary said President Trump came in rightly recognizing both the importance of NATO and the fact that it needed to be ready for the challenges that are presented today in 2019 and tomorrow in 2020.
The Secretary said the US has taken corrective actions to ensure NATO is an organization for our times. He pointed out that Washington is making “sure that the correct adversaries were identified, that we were fighting the right fight.”
And second, he added, the President “rightly recognized that there needed to be burden-sharing in a way that there was not, and he demanded that other countries step forward not just for America and for the American taxpayers – that’s certainly important – but it’s important for those countries too to step up and commit to defending themselves.”
Pompeo believes that Washington has made real progress. He said it amounts to $130 billion so far, with another roughly $400 billion to be paid into NATO between now and a couple years from now He called these significant changes as they amount to over half a trillion dollars in increased defense spending inside of NATO not coming from the American taxpayers. Canada and Germany are just two of the nations that have fallen short of the agreed upon 2% payment to NATO.
RUSSIA
In a December 9 interview, Secretary Pompeo spokes about the US-Russia relationship. He noted that there’s “work that we can do alongside Russia, we have an obligation to do it for the American people.” He added that he hoped Foreign Minister Lavrov and he could make progress on that. One area the US is working on is business-to-business relationships. Another is arms control issues between our two countries. Pompeo noted that the US wants to bring China into that discussion as well.
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Saturday, she presents key updates on U.S. foreign policy from the State Department.
Illustration: Pixabay