Culture

Trump announces plan to sign new trade deal with China... on Twitter, of course

"I will be signing our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China on January 15."

Donald Trump

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump is ready to talk trade with China again. The President tweeted Tuesday morning to announce his plan to sign a new trade deal with the country. In typical fashion, he added that Phase One — set to be signed on Jan. 15 — is "very large." Whatever that means.

According to Trump, "high level representatives" from China will attend the signing at the White House next month. He'll then travel to Beijing to flesh out the details of Phase Two with the Chinese government at a yet-undetermined future date.

It's been long enough — Trump's trade war with China has been raging since last year, and the two countries just finally reached a partial trade deal at the beginning of December. In the months leading up to that, though, the Trump administration blacklisted dozens of Chinese tech companies, Huawei being among the most well-known of the bunch. There has been much uncertainty as to how the trade war and recent developments will ultimately affect the markets.

Huawei, though, has remained somewhat optimistic (at least on the outside) and hasn't yet buckled under the pressure. Just this month, the company said it will soon begin to roll out a suite of apps in India to replace Google Play Services following Trump's order banning U.S. companies, including Google, from supplying Huawei certain Android services. And, despite taking some hard hits as a result of the blacklist — or as company chairman Eric Xu put it, "the bone-deep bite of winter" — Huawei ended this year by saying it will "go all out" to ensure its survival.