Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer reviewed the six-month-old phase one trade deal, in a video conference on August 15. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions, how has the deal fared so far? CGTN host Tian Wei spoke to Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and an expert on China-U.S. economic ties, who shared his insights on the prospects of China-U.S. trade and relations.

"The United States has a major shortfall of domestic savings. And so we have to run a current account deficit and trade deficits with many countries to attract the foreign capital and to make up for our shortfall of saving," said Roach.

Roach also pointed out that last year the U.S. ran trade deficits with 102 countries, and China was the biggest. But he does not agree that only focusing on China can solve the greater problem.

Roach thought that it's unfortunate when politicians are faced with domestic problems; they then want to blame others for creating the conditions under which those problems occur, and China is "very much a target of this political blame game in the United States."

In terms of China-U.S. relations, Roach admitted that over the past three and a half years, China-U.S. trade conflicts has taken a dramatic toll on public opinion toward China.

Roach hopes that if there is a change in administrations that there will be a different team of experts brought in to assess what is admittedly a complex problem. But the point is that both sides will go back to a framework that is potentially more constructive in resolving areas of mutual collaboration.

However, is this still possible with the ever deteriorating situation of the bilateral relations? Will there still be atmosphere good enough for having negotiations? Some say it seems that both sides are being pushed to a corner at this point.

According to Roach, it certainly feels that way right now, and the escalation of actions that the United States has taken against China in just the last few weeks is "without precedent in the memory."

"But again, I would urge you not to extrapolate. This is a pure political reaction to President Trump's very low and declining standings in the polls. And that is the worse the president's standing becomes due to the malfeasance of his policies in dealing with the pandemic, the more he is going to attack China. So don't extrapolate," Roach said.

World Insight with Tian Wei is an international platform for debate and intelligent discussion. It is the meeting point of both the highly influential and rising voices, facilitated by host, Tian Wei. It provides nutrition to form your own thoughts and ideas through 45-minute live debate and interviews.

Schedule: Monday-Saturday

Time (GMT): 1415, 2015

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