US Treasury’s Mnuchin sees no material impact from Virus on Sino-US deal -for now

• Financial

Late on Sunday, the 23rd of February 2020, over the sidelines of the latest G20 summit in Dubai, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said to the reporters that he was not expecting the coronavirus outbreak, which has every potentiality to evolve as a pandemic, would have a materially chronological impact on the Sino-US “Phase One” trade deal which was signed back in the January 15th this year to put an end to an 18-month-long bitter and costlier trade spat, although several analysts were contemplating Mnuchin’s comment as a move to calm down the money markets given the extent of battering the Chinese economy had to grapple with amid a nearly two month long epidemic that killed more than 2,500 people over the past three weeks and infected more than 75,000.

On top of that, downplaying the impact of a havoc-scale supply chain disruptions due to the China’s Wuhan coronavirus outbreak which had also spread in to other parts of the world and stoked fears of a pandemic, Mnuchin said in an interview with a press agency reporter late on Sunday (February 23rd), “I don’t expect that this will have any ramifications on Phase 1.

Based on everything that we know, and where the virus is now, I don’t expect that it’s going to be material. Obviously, that could change as the situation develops. Within the next few more weeks, we’ll all have a better assessment as there’s more data around the rate of the virus spreading. ”