Hello and welcome to another episode of the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency.

I would like to remind you all that we have just launched our print edition, and I'd like to encourage you all to subscribe.

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I'm joined today by Kate Andrews, who is a new presence here at The Spectator. You are our economics correspondent and you are

also an American, hopefully. I am both of those things, Freddie. Happy to be here.

Well, great to have you here. And I think we're going to do a bit of a sort of wrap up of this week

on focusing on one topic because there's a lot going on. This week we had Trump signing the first phase of a trade deal

with China. We had impeachment and Nancy Pelosi signing that several times. And then we've also got

the democratic race heating up as we head towards the 3rd of February in Iowa and the caucus is there.

First of all, let's talk about the trade part.

It's hard to say it's not good news for Trump, although perhaps a lot of team Trump are overhyping

what a big deal it is. What are your thoughts? Well, if you compare what China was importing

from the US in 2017 before the trade war started to now,

it's still pretty good news. They've agreed to be buying over $200 billion worth of goods

from the states over the next two years. And in 2017, they were at about $185 billion. So it's ticking up.

Many people are saying that looking at the 86 page agreement,

it's not nearly as comprehensive or in depth as they were hoping it would be. But actually,

you could argue that Trump has more or less gotten what he always wanted out of it,

especially because China agreeing to invest more in U.S. agriculture, an area that Donald Trump is very passionate

about protecting the farmers in the more rural areas. But also they're agreeing to making

it slightly easier for the U.S. to sue and for companies to sue if IP is being infringed

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