By Doina Chiacu, Alistair Smout, Reuters
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. Photo: AFP
A US-China trade deal is "done," US President Donald Trump says, hours after negotiators from Washington and Beijing agreed on a framework to get a fragile trade truce back on track and remove Chinese export restrictions on rare earth minerals and other critical industrial components.
Trump took to his social media platform to offer some of the first details to emerge from two days of marathon talks held in London that had, in the words of US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, put "meat on the bones" of an agreement reached last month in Geneva to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs that had reached crushing triple-digit levels. "Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me," Trump said on the Truth Social platform. "Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China. Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me!). We are getting a total of 55% tariffs, China is getting 10%."
A White House official said the 55 percent represents the sum of a baseline 10 percent "reciprocal" tariff Trump imposed on goods imported from nearly all US trading partners; 20 percent on all Chinese imports because of punitive measures Trump has imposed on China, Mexico and Canada associated with his accusation the three facilitate the flow of the opioid fentanyl into the US; and finally pre-existing 25 percent levies on imports from China that were put in place during Trump's first term in the White House.
The US president later posted: "President XI and I are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade. This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!"
Other specifics for how the deal would be implemented remained unclear.
China's commerce ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment and more information.
Framework for a deal
Officials from the two superpowers had gathered at a rushed meeting in London starting on Monday following a call last week between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping that broke a standoff that had developed just weeks after a preliminary deal reached in Geneva that had defused their trade war. The Geneva deal had faltered over China's continued curbs on critical minerals exports, prompting the Trump administration to respond with export controls preventing shipments of semiconductor design software, aircraft and other goods to China. Lutnick said the agreement reached in London would remove restrictions on Chinese exports of rare earth minerals and magnets and some of the recent US export restrictions "in a balanced way," but did not provide details after the talks concluded around midnight London time.
"We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus and the call between the two presidents," Lutnick said, adding that both sides will now return to present the framework to their respective presidents for approvals.
"And if that is approved, we will then implement the framework," he said.
In a separate briefing, China's Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang also said a trade framework had been reached in principle that would be taken back to US and Chinese leaders.
'Back to square one'
Trump's shifting tariff policies have roiled global markets, sparked congestion and confusion in major ports, and cost companies tens of billions of dollars in lost sales and higher costs. The World Bank on Tuesday slashed its global growth forecast for 2025 by four-tenths of a percentage point to 2.3 percent, saying higher tariffs and heightened uncertainty posed a "significant headwind" for nearly all economies. The US-China deal may keep the Geneva agreement from unravelling over duelling export controls, but does little to resolve deep differences over Trump's unilateral tariffs and longstanding U.S. complaints about China's state-led, export-driven economic model.
The two sides left Geneva with fundamentally different views of the terms of that agreement and needed to be more specific on required actions, said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Centre in Washington.
"They are back to square one, but that's much better than square zero," Lipsky added.
It was not immediately clear from Trump's comments where things stood regarding the timeline for a more comprehensive deal that had been reached last month in Geneva. There, the two sides set 10 August as the deadline to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement to ease trade tensions, or tariff rates would snap back from about 30 percent to 145 percent on the US side and from 10 percent to 125 percent on the Chinese side.
-Reuters
