China’s failure to meet the import targets agreed to under the “phase one” trade agreement with the United States signed in January 2020 can’t be blamed wholly on the global COVID-19 pandemic and supply-chain disruptions, according to a new report issued by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).
The failure reflects unrealistic import targets that China was never actually on track to meet, while some degree of bad faith on both sides of the deal also came into play, the report states.
