Developments. Reporter reporters are staged just outside the oval office now ready to go into the oval whenever the president invites them in for his discussion obviously a much anticipated moment at the white house. Do they have a deal . Do they not have a deal . Do they have something in between that might be an interim step along the way to a deal we dont know as we stand here right now. A lot of rumors swirling around washington and wall street but the chinese delegation is here, theyre in the oval office now. We expect to see the president at some point we just dont know exactly what theyre going to stay Stephen Mnuchin came to the Briefing Room a short time ago, i asked him for an update on the talks and whether or not its possible we get to the end of the day today without an announcement of any developments at all we declined to answer the question he said the talks so far have been productive and that time of the day they were going in to brief the president but no specific in
Threephase deal he calls it substantial. He says its bigger than previous iterations of the deal. And some of the items you mentioned were in it a pledge on currency transparency, a pledge by china to buy up to 50 billion in u. S. Agricultural goods a tariff hike that was planned for october 15th will not be going forward. And the signaling from the trade representative ambassador Robert Lighthizer was that there will be many weeks between the signing of the phase one deal and the december 15th tariff hike or the december 15th consumer facing tariffs to potentially deal with those. Thats going to be important to the market now whats interesting about todays announcement was that up until earlier this woke the president said vehemently that he wanted a big deal he wanted a comprehensive deal and it was not his preference to do a deal in pieces. He was asked that question multiple times this afternoon about why he chose to structure the deal like this given president promises that he had