The Guardian 16/12/19 | Vox Markets

The Guardian 16/12/19

The “phase one” US-China trade deal will nearly double US exports to China over the next two years and is “totally done” despite the need for translation and revisions to its text, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer said on Sunday. Lighthizer, speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, said there would be some routine “scrubs” to the text but “this is totally done, absolutely”. Lighthizer said a date and location for senior US and Chinese officials to formally sign the agreement was still being determined. The deal, announced on Friday after more than two and a half years of on-and-off negotiations between Washington and Beijing, will reduce some US tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for increased Chinese purchases of US agricultural, manufactured and energy products by some $200bn over the next two years. China has also pledged to better protect US intellectual property, to curb the coerced transfer of US technology to Chinese firms, to open its financial services market to US firms and to avoid manipulation of its currency.

The average price of a home will rise by 2% over the next year, with northern regions performing more strongly than those further south, according to predictions from the UK’s biggest property website. Rightmove said it expects to see asking prices rise by 2% in 2020 – and that the election result could pave the way for increased housing market activity this coming spring. The rebound in the market follows a moribund 2019, in which the number of sales agreed fell 3% on last year and the number of properties coming to market fell by 8%, said Rightmove. The website’s data for the latest month – to mid-December 2019 – revealed that prices were still declining as the election took place. Rightmove said the average price fell by 0.9% to £300,025 in December, leaving the market just 0.8% ahead of this time last year. But a re-acceleration next year, even to just 2% growth, will mean buyers having to pay £6,000 more for the average home.

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