Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the U.S. has put a trade war with China on hold, even as the administration races to renegotiate NAFTA. Mnuchin says the U.S., Mexico and Canada remain far apart.

DON GONYEA, HOST:

To policymaking now, where President Trump is hoping to fundamentally alter U.S. trade relationships. Trump met last week with one of China’s top economic officials, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says they made, quote, “very meaningful progress” towards heading off a trade war. Trump had threatened to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods, and Beijing warned of retaliation with tariffs on U.S. exports. But now it looks like those tensions might be easing. Mnuchin told Fox News Sunday the two countries are working on a framework of a broader economic deal.

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STEVEN MNUCHIN: We’re putting the trade war on hold. So right now, we are – we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework.

GONYEA: NPR’s Scott Horsley joins us now. Scott, welcome.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Don.

GONYEA: Scott, this news follows two days of intense trade negotiations between the U.S. and China here in Washington. What did those talks produce?

HORSLEY: There is a tentative agreement, Don, to boost China’s imports of U.S. ag products and energy products, but there was no firm commitment from China. There’s no specified dollar amount. And while there was some discussion of greater intellectual property protection, there was no firm agreement from China to change its ways and stop forcing U.S. companies to share their technological know-how as the price of doing business in China. Now, that was the issue, not the trade deficit that was ostensibly the rationale behind the U.S. threat to hit China with those steep tariffs.

GONYEA: So if we have this cease-fire, is that a victory for the Trump administration at this point?

HORSLEY: Well, the White House will certainly try to spin it that way. And it is good for energy exporters and for U.S. farmers – the farmers who had been bearing the brunt of the trade skirmish thus far. But it doesn’t really make a meaningful dent in that trade deficit that the president’s always complaining about.

Just to give you some perspective, Don, the U.S. exports just over $20 billion a year in farm products to China. Oil and gas exports might add another $10 billion a year. So if you doubled energy exports, and if you boosted farm exports by 40 percent, as Secretary Mnuchin has talked about doing, you’d be shaving maybe $15, $20 billion a year off the trade deficit – nowhere near the $200 billion reduction that the president says he wants.

Now, China would be happy to spend a little extra money rather than making more fundamental changes in its economic model. Critics worry that China’s getting off too easily. Scott Paul is one of those critics. He represents a consortium of steel companies and the steelworkers union.

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SCOTT PAUL: I don’t think that achieving some sort of a one-off agreement where China agrees to buy more U.S. products in sensitive industries like agriculture or aerospace is a substitute for getting lasting, binding commitments for China to end its myriad unfair trade practices.

HORSLEY: Paul and other trade skeptics would like to see the administration drive a harder bargain here.

GONYEA: Does China have some extra leverage because the U.S. needs them to help out on the whole North Korea nuclear talks?

HORSLEY: Oh, absolutely. You know, China is North Korea’s No. 1 trading partner, and they’ve been a key player in putting maximum pressure on Kim Jong Un, bringing him to the bargaining table. Trump needs China’s help to keep the heat on Kim, and the president’s acknowledged he’s willing to give China more favorable trade terms in exchange for that cooperation.

GONYEA: Let’s switch gears to this continent – NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement. There are talks going on there driven by White House discontent with the existing trade relationship with Mexico and Canada. They’re trying to negotiate a new NAFTA. They missed a deadline last week. What’s going on?

HORSLEY: This was a deadline set by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who says the administration needs to put something on paper quickly if they want a vote this year. Both Mexico and Canada have said they think it’s possible to strike a deal in the near future. But Trump’s trade representative says the parties are still nowhere near striking an agreement. That means any NAFTA agreement, if it happens, might float off into 2019. And, depending on what happens in the midterm elections, we could be looking at a very different Congress that’s set to review that.

GONYEA: That is NPR’s White House correspondent Scott Horsley.

Thanks, Scott.

HORSLEY: You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

New Hampshire’s state-run tax free liquor stores draw in customers from across the region. They also draw in modern-day bootleggers, prompting a wave of recent arrests.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

New Hampshire may proudly have a libertarian streak, but the Live Free or Die state also boasts about its state-run liquor stores. Alcohol’s a big revenue generator for the government – low prices in stores located near the state’s borders draw in customers from across the region. As New Hampshire Public Radio’s Todd Bookman reports, that convenience is also attracting modern-day bootleggers and prompts a wave of recent arrests.

TODD BOOKMAN, BYLINE: Right around noon on November 9 of last year, a black Chevy Suburban pulled up to a New Hampshire liquor store. The driver was a guy named Juncheng Chen – 46 years old, from Queens, N.Y. Chen bought some booze, then headed off to another liquor store to make another purchase, then another, then another. In total, he bought liquor at six different New Hampshire stores that afternoon.

Chen didn’t know it, but he was being watched. A criminal investigator with the New York State Department of Taxation was trailing him from store to store, and then southbound on the highway. When Chen crossed the border back into New York, he was pulled over with more than a thousand bottles of alcohol in his trunk, including more than 500 bottles of Hennessy cognac. He was arrested on felony charges for violating New York state law regarding importation of liquor. Mingli Chen – no relation – is his attorney.

MINGLI CHEN: He was buying the alcohol for personal use – for parties at home or parties somewhere.

BOOKMAN: Five-hundred bottles of Hennessy for personal use. Anyways, New York officials declined to answer questions, so it’s hard to know how frequently they’re conducting these types of stings. But what’s clear is this. New Hampshire is a known source of cheap alcohol for bootleggers, who likely resell the product in other states. And law enforcement from other states are paying attention.

GARY KESSLER: From our perspective, this is an organized criminal activity.

BOOKMAN: Gary Kessler is Deputy Commissioner at the Vermont Department of Liquor Control. Court records show his agency is also staking out New Hampshire liquor store parking lots. When the customers cross back into Vermont, they’re arrested for violating that state’s liquor laws regarding importation. Defendants have been caught with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of booze in their vehicles.

KESSLER: Clearly, these guys aren’t just randomly deciding that they’re going to come up and buy some cases of alcohol.

BOOKMAN: These operations by other states are happening without the assistance of New Hampshire officials – officials who quickly point out that, A, these customers aren’t violating any New Hampshire laws, and B, that the state-run liquor stores have always made attracting customers from other states a priority.

JOSEPH MOLLICA: Fifty percent of our business comes from cross-border sales.

BOOKMAN: This is New Hampshire Liquor Commission Chairman Joseph Mollica, speaking recently at the grand opening of a new state store.

MOLLICA: So contrary to what some people may feel, people coming to our outlets from cross-border and purchasing is extremely important to us.

BOOKMAN: These bootlegging stings come at an awkward time for the Liquor Commission. Earlier this year, New Hampshire politician Andru Volinsky called for an investigation into how the commission handles large, all-cash transactions. He says it may be violating federal financial laws. The IRS has also been questioning state employees about bootleggers in recent weeks.

Volinsky says the lack of communication between the states and the wave of recent arrests raises additional concerns.

ANDRU VOLINSKY: I think it’s a sad state of affairs that we, as New Hampshire, are not setting an ethical example.

BOOKMAN: Ethics and booze, however, rarely go hand in hand. For NPR News, I’m Todd Bookman in Concord, N.H.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHISKEY N’ RYE’S “BOOTLEGGER”)

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.