US And China Agree to a Trade Truce

Source Credit : Reuters

U.S. and Chinese officials said on Tuesday they had agreed on a framework to get their trade truce back on track and remove China's export restrictions on rare earths while offering little sign of a durable resolution to longstanding trade tensions.

At the end of two days of intense negotiations in London, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters the framework deal puts "meat on the bones" of an agreement reached last month in Geneva to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs that had reached crushing triple-digit levels.

But the Geneva deal had faltered over China's continued curbs on critical minerals exports, prompting the Trump administration to respond with export controls of its own 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 U.S. 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 U.S. and Chinese leaders. U.S. President Donald 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%, saying higher tariffs and heightened uncertainty posed a "significant headwind" for nearly all economies.

The 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 Center in Washington. "They are back to square one but that's much better than square zero," Lipsky added.

The two sides have until August 10 to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement to ease trade tensions, or tariff rates will snap back from about 30% to 145% on the U.S. side and from 10% to 125% on the Chinese side.