Chinese imports committed in the Phase One agreement were left with a balance of 200,000 million dollars, according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).

The phase one deal committed China to increasing its purchases of certain US goods and services in 2020 and 2021 by at least $200 billion above 2017 levels.

Thus, China agreed to buy at least 227.9 billion dollars of US exports in 2020 and 274.5 billion in 2021, for a total of 502.4 billion in the two years.

The agreement also established legal commitments for a defined set of manufacturing, services, agricultural and energy products, as discussed below.

Ultimately, China bought just 57% of the US exports it has committed to buying during 2020-21.

US exports of covered goods and services to China for the two years were $288.8 billion.

Chinese imports

On the one hand, always according to PIIE, manufacturing was the most economically significant part of the agreement, representing 44% of the covered exports of the United States in 2017.

Of that, cars and planes dominated US exports before the trade war. Both fared poorly in 2020-21.

On the other hand, services were the second largest part of the deal, comprising another 37% of US exports to China.

When the phase one deal was signed in early 2020, China’s services purchase commitments were arguably the most reasonable.

Finally, during the Trump administration, agriculture was the politically most important part of the agreement, even though it only accounted for 14% of covered exports.

When retaliatory tariffs from China hit US farm exports in 2018-19, Trump gave the sector tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies.

In the days leading up to the 2020 election, the administration released a report touting the resumption of agricultural sales to China, ignoring ongoing problems facing US manufacturing, energy and services exports.

Agricultural exports of the United States returned to 2017 levels, eventually reaching 83% of the 2020-21 commitment.