China’s failure to meet the import targets agreed to under the “phase one” trade agreement signed in January 2020 cannot be blamed wholly on the global pandemic and supply-chain disruptions, according to a new report issued by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). The failure reflects unrealistic import targets that China was never actually on track to meet, while some degree of bad faith on both sides of the deal also came into play, the report states. Under the “phase one” trade agreement, Beijing committed to increasing its purchase of U.S. products across the agricultural, energy, and manufacturing sectors in 2020 and 2021 by at least $200 billion beyond what China bought in 2017. The targets were at least $227.9 billion worth of U.S. products in 2020 and at least $274.5 billion in 2021, totaling $502.4 billion for the two years in question. Besides the import targets, the deal …