Trump and Xi reach trade deal, easing tensions in fierce US-China rivalry
US president says rare earths issue settled after ‘amazing’ meeting with Chinese counterpart.
Gyeongju, South Korea – United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to call off a mutual escalation in their countries’ trade war, lowering the temperature in a heated confrontation that has threatened to upend the global economy.
Trump and Xi sealed a one-year trade truce on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea, where the two leaders met face-to-face for the first time since 2019.
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But while Trump and Xi’s agreement offered a reprieve to businesses unsettled by months of back-and-forth trade salvoes, it did little to roll back existing trade barriers and left numerous points of contention between the sides unresolved.
“The apparent results of this meeting will be a pause and a small roll back in the trade war,” Dennis Wilder, a professor at Georgetown University who worked on China at the CIA and the White House’s National Security Council, told Al Jazeera.
“Both sides have not given up their trade weapons but merely have agreed to stop firing as long as both sides hold to the agreements,” Wilder said.
Under the deal, China agreed to defer its planned export controls on rare earths, while the US will drop a threatened 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
Trump said he would also lower a 20 percent fentanyl-related tariff to 10 percent after Xi agreed to “work very hard” to stem flows of the synthetic opiate.
“I believe he is going to work very hard to stop the death that is coming in,” Trump said on Air Force One after departing South Korea.
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