December 31, 2019

When Do We Get to See the Trade Deal, Mr. President?

It's already 2020 in Shanghai! Are they ahead of us on trade, too?SIPA Asia via ZUMA

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Our mysterious “Phase One” trade deal with China is set to be signed:

President Trump said Tuesday he will sign the first phase of a trade deal with China on Jan. 15, as the two nations move to cement a partial truce to the trade war….But even though the White House said a deal was reached more than two weeks ago, neither side has released the exact wording of their agreement. Still, the announced deal has been enough to lift financial markets because many investors feel encouraged about the direction of the talks.

President Trump keeps boasting about how this trade deal is worth $30 billion to America’s farmers. Or maybe $40 billion. Or $50 billion. It’s the greatest trade deal in history!

And yet, for some reason nobody has seen the actual text of the deal. It’s tied up in “translation.” Or “legal review.” Or something. My own guess is that it’s tied up in “this deal doesn’t really do much of anything at all.” But I’m a cynic.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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