Former trade official: U.S.-China deal purchases could hurt plurilateral efforts on China

While analysts agreed the U.S. should start to “multilateralize” its China policy, one former U.S. trade official argued that the aggressive purchasing goals in the phase-one agreement between the U.S. and China could hinder those efforts, especially for those countries whose exports could be threatened. “The area where there’s going to be some friction, some difference in views among us and other countries will be the purchasing commitments,” Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and former...