00:00I'm joined now by John Glenn, Chief Economist at the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.
00:05Thank you so much for your time.
00:06You know, we still don't have a lot of specifics, even after China's response.
00:13But we are getting a sense that there's a very positive energy,
00:16and certain words sort of jump out, you know, mutual benefit, positive, well-balanced.
00:22A sense of momentum, is that how you understand the communication that has come out since these talks?
00:29Absolutely. So what we've had is a very good meeting between the presidents of the United States and China.
00:38And what they've sought to do is to reduce the amount of heat, the amount of noise around trade negotiations.
00:45Unfortunately, what we then find is that whilst it's easy to damage relations between countries,
00:52it takes an amount of time to rectify them.
00:55And that's best done away from the lights of the social media, away from the lights of media generally,
01:02in darkened rooms with negotiations between senior people on both sides,
01:09which seek to deliver this mutual benefit, which has been clearly posted in the communiques
01:18from both the Chinese and the U.S. governments.
01:21And we are hearing about these new trade and investment councils.
01:27The trade council, we understand, is the place where any further tariff extension,
01:32tariff truce extension, I should say, beyond November, will be decided.
01:36How important do you think these two bodies are going to be going forward?
01:41It's enormously important, but again, we have to be realistic here.
01:45Essentially, what we're looking at is a rebranding of the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade,
01:53which has existed between the United States and China since 1983,
01:58and has done an enormous amount of work to improve trade relations
02:03and to generate the benefits of trade that we enjoyed for a period of almost 40 years
02:09between China and North America.
02:12Beijing has now confirmed that, indeed, a Boeing deal has been done,
02:17but they haven't said how many planes they're going to buy.
02:19So how important is this Boeing deal?
02:23Do you think it's a sign of more agreements to follow?
02:27Yeah, it's a signal.
02:29And again, you know, we mustn't be over-influenced by the movement of markets.
02:35You know, markets expect things to happen very, very quickly.
02:37They expect high upside in deals, whereas, you know,
02:43when we've had the noise around trade relations that we've experienced over the last 12 months,
02:49it takes an amount of time to calm that down,
02:52to start to enjoy what you might call these high-profile arrangements,
02:59which are designed to indicate the degree to which trade is starting to normalise,
03:07or at least an intention to want to move in that direction,
03:10but to actually deliver the real benefits of trade that we've enjoyed
03:15and to reverse some of the noise and the poor relations that have been generated in the last 12 months.
03:22That's going to take an amount of time.
03:24It's going to take this Commission on Trade and Investment to do its work away from the light of the
03:32cameras.
03:32Thank you so much.
03:34John Glenn is Chief Economist at the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.
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